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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26172583">never ballpoints</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rancour/pseuds/rancour'>rancour</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hetalia: Axis Powers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abuse of Authority, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, Blackmail, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional Manipulation, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Molestation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Imbalance, Student England (Hetalia), Teacher America (Hetalia), Teacher-Student Relationship, Underage Rape/Non-con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:47:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>40,219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26172583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rancour/pseuds/rancour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>At first, it’s nothing but a passing interest. Their school—a private, all boys bed and board—is prestigious enough to attract students the world over. One British transfer is nothing new.</i>
</p><p>De-anon and thorough overhaul of a very old fic from the Hetalia kink meme for the prompt of Teacher!Alfred/Student!Arthur set in a boys' boarding school. Their incipient friendship collapses and Arthur's trust is betrayed when Alfred gives in to his desires.</p><p>(Please heed the tags. Additional warnings will be described in the relevant chapter notes.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>America/England (Hetalia)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At first, it’s nothing but a passing interest. Their school—a private, all boys bed and board—is prestigious enough to attract students the world over. One British transfer is nothing new.</p><p>Still. Alfred spots him in class, first, because of course, where else would he see him? At the back, with his hands in his hair and getting the eye from his desk neighbour. A French student, Bonnefoy, if Alfred’s memory could be trusted.</p><p>And he obviously has no idea what Alfred is talking about, because he squints at the board and mutters under his breath, scratching his way through sheets of graph paper. Alfred, always for the little guy, is utterly fascinated. He watches him more often, after that. So much so that he catches little things he would otherwise never notice. Arthur is right-handed. He writes in neat, calligraphic script. He always leaves three lines from the top of the page and, almost without fail, rolls his sleeves up half-way through the lesson.</p><p>He uses a 2H pencil and a rollerball pen, never ballpoints. Every so often, he forgets his calculator and has to borrow his neighbour’s, and this is an almost theatrical event: frustrated pleading on his part, smug superiority on Bonnefoy’s until eventually he relents.</p><p>A check proves that his name is Arthur—Arthur Kirkland, could you get any <i>more</i> English than that—and while Alfred is loath to show bias, he’s interested in him. It’s something about his dissonant handsomeness, a strong brow but a gamine face, his rare smile, his way of speaking.</p><p>Right, the accent. It’s nice, is all, and Alfred likes to hear the boy speak up. He likes all his students to speak up: it’s how you create a rapport, a relationship. <i>A positive environment conducive to education</i>, to use bullshit board-speak. But it is true that students do so much better if they like their teachers, and Alfred has always loved that aspect of the job. He likes being close enough to talk to, to confide in.</p><p>It’s just that this one time, this one kid, has snared his attention like no one else ever has. It makes Alfred feel like a mouse in a trap. Baited, helpless, scrabbling. He channels his energy outwards, learning what he can about Arthur outside of class. It certainly isn’t difficult. A casual raising of his name in the teacher’s lounge, a quick flick through his records. It isn’t that strange, because why would those files be available otherwise? And with these, Alfred is content he knows all that he needs to know.</p><p>(Arthur Kirkland, fourteen years old and an English Lit genius. He has four brothers, only one wholly related; his only guardian his father. Not so gifted when it comes to math and physics, if his grades are any indication, and attending the school on an all-inclusive scholarship based on a frankly extraordinary personal essay.)</p><p>For those first three weeks, Alfred does little more than watch him. It’s harmless, easy, and yes, far less creepy than scouring the filing cabinets for information. Arthur doesn’t appear to notice, too busy cringing over his work. Which Alfred finds endearing, by the way. This goes on for too long, really, before Arthur finally takes notice, one lesson feeling the weight of Alfred’s gaze on him and looking up. He flushes pink all the way to his hairline and scrambles for his textbook, interpreting Alfred’s stare as a disapproving one. He couldn’t be further from the truth.</p><p>Alfred just smiles at him. He never does stop looking. Alfred finds that he can’t, and he finds that he doesn’t much mind that he can’t, either.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Arthur’s homework is always handed in on time, but it is rarely ever correct. And that is a bit of a problem, as much as Alfred is rooting for him.<p>Alfred has never been one to toot his own horn, but he does think that he’s a good teacher. His students and his colleagues have told him as such. He’s won <i>coolest faculty member</i> three times now in silly end-of-year awards, but he’s won <i>most helpful</i> more often. (Okay, four times.) His office hours are in high demand, and his classes well-attended: he’s never had to fail a student, and he sure as hell wants to keep that record.</p><p>Arthur, however, seems to be doing an excellent job of either ignoring him completely or misunderstanding him completely. It’s almost impressive, in a way, because polynomials are really not that hard.</p><p>So, after one lesson, last thing on a Friday, when no one is paying attention with the promise of the weekend before them, Alfred stops Arthur with a hand on his shoulder. Arthur jumps at the touch, snapping to attention like a soldier. His face is broken open with utter terror, even as Alfred releases him and gestures to his desk, smiling all the while.</p><p>“Sit, please,” Alfred says. In one smooth movement, he grabs a free chair and slides it opposite his desk. Students filter out of the room around them, hardly noticing.</p><p>Arthur fidgets, his hands shoved in his pockets. The fear has given way to uneasiness, or perhaps embarrassment—he’s avoiding Alfred’s eye contact. Once the final stragglers disappear through the door, he drops into the seat with a <i>hmph</i>.</p><p>Alfred circles his desk and stands there, facing him. “So. You’re not doing too great, are you?” He leans forward, lowering himself just a little so he’s nearer Arthur’s eye level. A classic technique to communicate kind authority.</p><p>Despite it, Arthur’s eyes go wide. He worries at his bottom lip, holding it sweetly between his teeth.</p><p>“Sir.” He inhales thickly, hands stiff in his lap. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try harder, I swear. It’s just—the teaching here is different from the UK. I’m still trying to catch up with the curriculum.”</p><p>Alfred cocks an eyebrow.</p><p>“Don’t worry about it too much,” Alfred says, and drops his hand to Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur jolts in his seat. “We all have our weak points, yeah?”</p><p>Arthur looks up at him, a watery, uncertain gaze, and then down at his fingers, nested together still in his lap.</p><p>“Um. Yes, sir,” Arthur says, frowning at his hands like they aren’t his own. The silence drags on a little long.</p><p>Alfred withdraws his hand and settles back into his own seat, an old leather thing he insisted on bringing from his parent’s place when he moved out. It creaks dramatically, almost comical in the quiet. Arthur does not so much as crack a smile.</p><p>“I was wondering,” Alfred goes on, “if you would like some extra lessons, maybe? In the afternoons, after Friday’s class.”</p><p>He can almost hear the whip-crack of Arthur’s neck. His whole body seems to stiffen at the suggestion, though when his mouth opens, Alfred goes on before he can find an excuse.</p><p>“Only for a half-hour or so, Arthur.” Alfred smiles his bigtooth-bravado-smile, his all-American smile. It’s the first time he’s said Arthur’s name out loud beyond calling on him in class, and he rather likes the sound of it. “Just to see how you get on, okay? I mean, it can’t hurt.”</p><p>Arthur’s eyebrows—really rather impressive ones, actually—meet in the middle, and the smile he offers is slanted and strange and all kinds of wonderful. A little wicked, even. Alfred wishes he had a camera because it feels like a moment worth recording; because it makes his hair stand on end for no reason whatsoever.</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Arthur says finally, and there’s a confidence in his voice now along with that smile. “Um, when should we start?”</p><p>(The trickle of lightning up Alfred’s spine is startling, unfamiliar though not unpleasant, even as some part of him knows it shouldn’t be there.)</p><p>“Next Friday.” Alfred pulls his pocket diary from the desk, though he never bothers keeping a schedule. The only reason it’s thick in his hands is because he’s filled it with post-it notes and receipts scribbled with mathematical beauty.</p><p>He flicks to the next week, forefinger pressed to the bold, black <i>F</i> of the Friday, and Arthur nods his assent.</p><p>(The lightning creeps down his tailbone.)<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Next Friday comes faster the less Alfred lets himself dwell on it. Someone like Arthur would probably say, <i>a watched kettle never boils</i>. Lesson after lesson after lesson; his diary reads <i>mon-tues-wed-thurs—</i><p>—and <i>fri</i> is circled three times in red, and beside that three other letters in Alfred’s chicken scratch (ART). It’s lucky that Alfred’s last class on a Friday is Arthur’s class. They can get to work straight away when the bell rings, no problem.</p><p>Arthur appears at his door with admirable punctuality considering its last period on a Friday. The students of his previous lesson are still dragging their feet, keen to steal even five, ten minutes from their final class. Even Alfred feels that fifth period math at the end of the week is something of a slog, but the sight of Arthur—book bag nestled between his feet, blazer folded under his arm—gives Alfred an inexplicable thrill.</p><p>Today, Arthur has his own calculator and a smile frayed like wire. Bonnefoy arrives some fashionable five minutes late, well after Arthur has unpacked; Alfred is quietly pleased that they seem to be ignoring each other. Arthur nods along as Alfred explains nonnegative integers, his pen pressing a swell to his middle finger. Alfred watches it skitter in the fluorescent light, the wet ink—black, never blue—flashing when he walks by. Thank god he’s done these classes so many times; as distracted as he is, Alfred never loses his train of thought.</p><p>When you enjoy your job, it goes so much faster. His dad was always full of those sort of sayings. <i>Do what you love and you never work a day in your life, Al</i>. Ironic, considering his father sold McMansions to rich white nobodies and hated every single minute of it. But Alfred would rather do nothing else in the world than teach, and so the hour is gone in the blink of an eye. Not wanting to embarrass his new favourite student, Alfred does not leap on him as the period ends. Instead he slumps in his chair with his cooling cup of coffee and an obligatory plate of shop-bought cookies.</p><p>He hopes that Arthur likes chocolate chip.</p><p>Slowly the class thins, then empties, and Alfred is left looking at two boys: Arthur and Francis both, apparently at some strange stand-off at their desks. He watches Arthur push Francis’ shoulder with no small amount of effort. There’s an angry spark in his eye. The exaggerated smirk on Francis’ face does not diminish even as he stumbles a few feet from the force of the shove.</p><p>Alfred clears his throat, a deliberate, jarring <i>ahuh-hem</i>, and their heads snap like matching elastics. Francis shoots Arthur one last, lightning grin before he disappears into the corridor, his slender shape fitting between the crowds. He pays Alfred no mind at all.</p><p>Arthur bows his head, equal parts embarrassed and ashamed, and shuffles his way to the front. New sympathy prickles to life in Alfred’s chest.</p><p>(Along with something else, thump-athump-athump, a liquid rhythm in his veins.)</p><p>“Well,” Alfred starts, grabbing for his textbook, a heap of spare papers, “polynomials?”</p><p>Arthur flushes and says something that might be <i>yes, sir</i>.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s four weeks on—four extra sessions after four Friday fifth periods—that things mutate.<p>Alfred can’t pinpoint when the thoughts started changing, exactly, only that they do. And that he likes it despite himself.</p><p>(That’s not quite honest, though, because he knows full-well when they changed. A feverish dream of Arthur in a pleated skirt, or just his shirt, or nothing at all. Arthur with wide, glossy bottle-green eyes, his mouth saying something inaudible even as Alfred catches the edge of each syllable, a voice like milk and bread and butter-silk.)</p><p>It could become a problem. Scratch that, it <i>is</i> a problem. It’s one thing to appreciate a student’s company, Alfred’s played at mentor more than enough times. His feelings for Arthur—well, even Alfred can’t pretend to be so naïve as to not recognise attraction. He should stop this now, while it’s still a nascent thing. He could recommend Arthur be transferred to another class—Ludwig is certainly competent if a little intimidating—or he could put an end to their extra sessions. The lie would come easy: a needier student to tutor, an extra-curricular club to manage, a new mark scheme to memorise before exam season…</p><p>And yet.</p><p>And yet, Alfred doesn’t want to stop, not now. Not if he’s being honest with himself. He wants to take Arthur’s hands in his. His own darker, larger, than those spidery slender fingers. He wants to hold Arthur’s face in a cruel brace near his aching groin and show him just what power he has over Alfred. He wants to see Arthur undone, unravelling—and more besides, the vulnerability of his naked shape in Alfred’s bed in the milk-light of early morning, a quiet promise.</p><p>(The real problem is how to get these things.)</p><p>He’s been watching Arthur more closely, now. Alfred’s not proud of it, but he can’t help it: Arthur’s pull is irresistible, magnetic, and Alfred has neither the strength nor the will to resist his orbit. And while the wonderful, rational part of his mind is screaming <i>sicko</i>, the other part is saying, what’s wrong with a little indulgence.</p><p>Alfred’s never been so great at self-restraint. He has a sweet tooth like none other, chugs caffeine like its water; he’s a sucker for impulse buys, Amazon deliveries… and it’s not as if he’ll act on it, anyway, so what’s the harm. Besides, it’s better for Arthur’s academic development to keep him in his class rather than to disrupt his learning this far into the semester.</p><p>Arthur bent over the arm of Alfred’s ancient leather chair, his gasping cry—Alfred could make him recite pi to twenty places—and Alfred would watch him stretch himself open and beg for more, an animal hunger so alike his own gnawing desire.</p><p>Alfred shifts in his seat under the scrutiny of the afternoon sun, looking down at his inky fingers. His notes are blotted with mistakes, and pretty much nonsensical besides. He screws the lot up into a ball, and when he lobs it into the trash, he misses by a good few feet.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>One Friday afternoon, Arthur is wan and strangely withdrawn. He points out the window, unable or merely unwilling to hide how distracted he is.<p>“It’s raining,” he says, “again.”</p><p>It’s an unnecessary comment considering the hard rain lashing the windows. It’s been like this the whole afternoon, a persistent drizzle coalescing into a storm. Alfred looks up from his book, from Arthur’s homework book, from the equations he’s starting to get right and which fill Alfred’s stomach with warm satisfaction. He grins.</p><p>“Doesn’t that make you feel at home?” he says, feeling Arthur’s eyes on him, over each green tick-tick-tick of his answers. Does he feel the same sense of contentment, seeing the result of his efforts? Alfred adds, almost as an afterthought, “Anyway, it’s good for the earth.”</p><p>Arthur hums. They’re sat kitty-corner on the student side of Alfred’s desk, and this close he can feel Arthur shift restlessly in his seat more than see him.</p><p>“I don’t like it,” Arthur says. He rises from his chair and stands at the sill, breath fogging the window. Alfred lowers the book to his desk and joins him there, staring through the glass, the grounds a bland and unrelenting grey. Arthur’s eyes look just as clouded.</p><p>“Me neither,” Alfred says, an honest answer. They watch the storm for a few moments more in easy silence until Alfred gestures over at Arthur’s seat. The boy sits down hard, the motion forcing a sigh out of him.</p><p>He stares despondently at his papers.</p><p>“Not feelin’ up to it today?” Alfred tries, scooping the worksheets and Arthur’s book into his hands, knocking the edges together. The weight is pleasant, familiar, the smell of the room settling his nerves: pencil shavings, boys’ deodorant, the clammy scent of rained-on clothes.</p><p>Arthur sighs again, a deep, deeply tired sigh, like he’s done with life rather than just the tutoring session. He nods.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, the word escaping in a breath, but he continues quickly, “I mean, I don’t think I’ll be of much use today.”</p><p>Alfred had noticed even in class the glassy absence of his gaze. A student’s attention, once lost, is nearly impossible to catch again, at least without going to extremes. A few ideas surface in Alfred’s mind, though he doesn’t give them the chance to take shape. Not when Arthur is right there.</p><p>“Go on,” Alfred says, leaning close enough to squeeze his shoulder. Arthur flinches at the touch. “If you want an early night.”</p><p>(Alfred watches him stand, skinny drainpipe legs unfolding, apologies tumbling from his mouth and his hands raised as he makes for the door, <i>please sir please sir have me take me</i>. By the time Arthur is walking down the corridor, Alfred’s nerves are shot, hands trembling even as he lays them flat on his desk.)<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
The next week, the sun shines with a hot vengeance. Alfred figures Arthur must prefer this to last Friday, but his scowl is resolutely still in place. Alfred watches him at the window again, tapping it with his knuckles, before he turns to his desk.</p><p>“It’s so hot,” Arthur grumbles, shucking his bag off his back. The zip is coming open at the side where it bulges awkwardly from books, a water bottle, his pencil case. When Arthur drops it besides Alfred’s chair, he spots a hardback novel as thick as his fist amongst the slender laminate textbooks.</p><p>“I don’t think it’s that bad.” Alfred shrugs. “I like this kinda weather, myself.”</p><p>Arthur rolls his eyes. They’re bloodshot at the corners, Alfred can’t help but notice.</p><p>“I don’t,” he says.</p><p>And then they work on quadratics until the sun sets, a bloated yellow glow on the horizon. Bright enough to make your eyes water.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s starting to turn into a sickness.<p>Starve a fever feed a cold <i>nurse</i> an obsession.</p><p>(Obsessing over his obsession and obsessing over his obsessing over his obsession, a vicious circle, a self-fulfilling prophecy—that’s what they call it, don’t they, the snake eating its own tail and choking on the taste.)</p><p>Alfred knows that Arthur sleeps in room number two-six, the third dorm on the left-hand side of his accommodation as you enter from the stairs. The number plate is brassy, tarnished, and the door is pockmarked with holes from pinned notices. Arthur shares it with Francis Bonnefoy and another boy whose name Alfred can’t remember. He knows that Arthur likes milk in his tea but no sugar, and raspberry jelly (<i>jam</i>, Arthur had corrected him) over strawberry, and he’d choose mint creams or butterscotch before any cookie. And he hates liquorice.</p><p>Alfred’s hands are sweating, his fingers stupid, damp with sweat and terror as he flicks through the papers on his desk. Arthur’s are here; Alfred usually tries to collect them in alphabetical order. K after J, before L. When he finds his homework, he clutches it so hard in his hot hands that the paper creases, the ink from his rollerball pen smudging. Arthur writes <i>Kirkland</i> with practiced fluency, a signatorial flair that very few fourteen-year-old boys have, even as he writes <i>Arthur</i> all cramped to one side like it’s scared of his surname.</p><p>Alfred’s hands shake. This is insane—more than insane, it’s ridiculous. He can’t even understand it himself beyond the frantic urge for possession, a craving unsated for so long that even something like Arthur’s scribbled calculations can excite him. He will lose the papers under his pillow and play apologetic with Arthur, who’ll forgive him, who won’t care nor guess that Alfred dreams of him naked, pleading, the low register of his voice in the warm dark.</p><p>He folds a line through the sheets of graph paper, following it with his nail until the crease becomes a permanent scar. He tucks them among the folders in his briefcase. Above the door, the clock does not chime but ticks past five o clock in the eerie silence of his empty classroom.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“I’m afraid I lost your work, Arthur,” Alfred says, and swears he can feel his tongue turn to slick silver in his mouth. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Arthur’s forehead wrinkles, a dimple forming between his eyebrows that Alfred wants nothing more than to touch.</p><p>“Oh?” The dimple deepens. “I, er… would you like me to re-do the work?”</p><p>Arthur has his bottom lip between his teeth again, a familiar nervous habit. Alfred can’t keep his gaze from flicking to it.</p><p>“Oh, uh. No,” he says dumbly. When he draws his focus back up to eye level, Arthur’s frown is deeper still, those impressive eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle of his forehead. “No, no, not at all! Honestly, it was my fault.”</p><p>Not even through accident. This really is all Alfred’s fault. He’s the one who can’t help but worry at this horrible, burning want that’s gutted him. He’s the one who wants to fuck Arthur senseless. Alfred’s apology is sincere, but no amount of contrition can make up for that fact.</p><p>Arthur’s frown softens, then, and he shrugs.</p><p>“Okay, as long as it’s not a problem. See you after class,” he says, his gaze cast away from Alfred’s face to the wall behind him. Alfred’s dreamt of holding him there, Arthur’s thighs in his hands, his weight braced against Alfred’s bulk as he has him up against the whiteboard.</p><p>Arthur walks back to his desk, pausing only to murmur an insult into Francis’ ear (Alfred’s no lip reader, but from previous experience he expects the word to be <i>bastard</i>) and the twisted ball of fear and satisfaction in his belly only grows.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It just so happens that Alfred feels like eating outside today. It’s fine weather, cool but bright. And it just so happens that Arthur often eats near where he chooses.<p>(He knows because he can see so from his office, a sad little box of a room, third on the right from the stairs on the second floor. He can see where Arthur eats his lunch, or sometimes a mere bag of chips in place of lunch, laughing, shouting, smacking Francis around the head, stealing each other’s shoes. Watching them like that, Alfred can’t help but think that they really are just teenagers, so young, <i>too</i> young, and his mind folds in on itself in miserable hatred. But still never quite enough.)</p><p>It just so happens that his brother made him too many grasshopper squares on his last visit, and Alfred can’t eat them all: they sit in neat tricolour cubes, layered with baking parchment in a transparent Tupperware beside him.</p><p>He pretends to be marking when his students approach, abuzz with interest as they talk to him. The Tupperware works as he expects it to, and soon Alfred is passing out brownies, laughing at the excited look of even the <i>too-cool</i> boys. The cafeteria here is good, sure, but Matthew’s baking is unparalleled. Alfred is likeable enough anyway to carry a conversation, and this in combination with the offer of free food means he has a small audience hanging on his every word.</p><p>There’s no sign of Arthur, though. Every so often, Alfred lifts his gaze to the grounds, scanning and re-scanning his gathered crowd for a blond head.</p><p>His students disperse gradually as the lunch hour comes to a close. There’s five, ten minutes left before the bell, and Alfred sighs, snapping the lid of the container shut. He doesn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved, his stomach turning over and over even as he thinks <i>it’s better this way, don’t tempt fate, why would you even</i>—but then, Alfred sees him. Arthur, shooing off his friends like they’re mere extras, brushing down the front of his pants in a sweetly self-conscious way. His eyes are trained away from Alfred even as he draws close, his hands tucked back into his pockets. There are earphones looped over his shoulder, the telling square of a music player at his upper thigh. The affected nonchalance is surprisingly charming, and Alfred feels his grin grow wider still.</p><p>(Somehow, Arthur’s posture is still perfect. Alfred watches the tidy line of his shoulders with an attention that’s frightening.)</p><p>Arthur ducks his head a little as he stops in front of Alfred’s bench. An awkward half smile lights up his face.</p><p>“Good afternoon, Mr. Jones,” Arthur says, sitting down next to him in the bench. There’s an appropriate amount of distance between them, likely enough for another person. The box of grasshopper squares sits in the middle, a barrier as much as it is an invitation.</p><p>“Artie,” Alfred says, his mouth still half full of brownie. Arthur gives a strangled protest at the new nickname—maybe <i>git</i> or <i>sod</i>, not so brave as to call his teacher a bastard—but he swallows it back nevertheless. Alfred watches his internal conflict with no small amount of amusement before he starts again, tapping the Tupperware lid with his knuckles. “You want any dessert? Or—what, pudding?”</p><p>Arthur glances down at the container, and after a brief moment, shakes his head. “No, thank you. I’m not a big fan of chocolate.”</p><p>The disappointment should not be so intense, but it is. Alfred picked grasshopper squares especially for Arthur. He has a freezer stocked to the brim with Matthew’s baking experiments, enough to feed a family of four for a month. The pleasing bitterness of dark chocolate and peppermint, inspired by the memory of Arthur’s fondness for mint creams—it should’ve been a guaranteed hit.</p><p>He moderates his disappointment, but Alfred still lets his mouth twist. “Oh. I didn’t know people couldn’t like chocolate.”</p><p>Arthur looks like he might laugh, but he catches that, too, and holds it in his throat. “I didn’t know someone could like it so much. You’re always eating it in class.”</p><p>Alfred’s heart skips a beat—or six—at the idea of Arthur watching him in class. Even though he’s the teacher, for god’s sake, where else should he expect Arthur’s attention to be? It shouldn’t be so flattering, and Alfred shouldn’t think so much about it—but it is, and he does.</p><p>“Am I?” Alfred smirks as he brushes incriminating chocolate crumbs from his fingers. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”</p><p>Quiet falls between them. There’s only some few minutes now before the bell signals the end of lunch, and Alfred wonders at Arthur’s deliberate coyness, appearing only once he was alone. With his friends you wouldn’t think it, but Alfred has realised that Arthur is surprisingly timid. Even now, he looks down at his feet rather than at Alfred directly. It allows him to watch the rise and fall of Arthur’s chest beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, pale wrists showing below his folded cuffs.</p><p>“It’s frustrating,” Arthur says, suddenly, spinning an earbud around in his fingers, “how they correct me on everything.”</p><p>It throws Alfred for a loop, and he wonders if in his distracted attention he missed Arthur say something. The tinny sound of music whips through the air. “Oh? What d’you mean?”</p><p>(They’re sat together, so close even with the space between them, and Alfred can’t understand why Arthur doesn’t just leave, please leave. Another thought surfaces through his mania: that Arthur must enjoy his company enough to waste his free time with him, like this, and that has Alfred’s stomach twist itself into vicious knots for a different reason altogether.)</p><p>Arthur humphs dramatically.</p><p>“The English teachers. How I spell things,” he says darkly, scowling at the floor. “Stuff like that. I mean, this is such a diverse school that it’s basically an international one, who gives a—who cares if I spell ‘flavour’ as ‘flavour’.”</p><p>Alfred hides his laugh in his hand. He can’t help himself, because Arthur sounds so deadly serious, scuffing his shoes against the ground and muttering like a child, because he is one, only fourteen, a child trying out his adult skin. Precocious, that’s the word.</p><p>(Arthur’s birthday is in April. Not fourteen much longer.)</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about that in math, at least,” Alfred tells him, reaching to pat Arthur on the back. Third time he’s made contact, and this time Arthur doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. “Right?”</p><p>Arthur’s eyes shine with some quiet amusement, even as he rolls them. “Oh yes, just have to worry about failing…” He hums and kicks at a pebble at his feet. “Properly failing,” he adds for good measure. He looks up at Alfred, a strange beseeching look through pale eyelashes.</p><p>The music continues to whisper, Arthur’s fingers twisting back and forth, a scant <i>hshh</i> snaking on the wind. Alfred can’t stop his thoughts from voicing themselves.</p><p>“You’ll give yourself tinnitus,” he says, gesturing to the wire wound around Arthur’s wrist from his relentless spinning. “And you won’t fail. That’s what I’m here for.”</p><p>Surprise flashes across Arthur’s face, so brief that Alfred almost misses it. He covers it well with a snort, rolling his eyes for the nth time, but still he turns the music down. The smile he offers is fragile, and Alfred wants to press his fingers into his flesh and peel it away like a dream. It can’t be real. It shouldn’t be real.</p><p>“Really, sir. I wouldn’t have thought you’d care so much.”</p><p>And Alfred wonders: does he mean the tinnitus, or the math?<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
After lunch—after speaking with Arthur for hardly eight minutes and forty-eight seconds and acting shocked that it goes by so quickly—Alfred has to lock himself in a toilet cubicle and <i>think</i>.</p><p>He flexes his fingers, in-out, the tendons tightening like strung wire, and tries to repress the heat in his gut that’s leeching up into his brain. The air is cooler here, at least, so he presses his forehead into his clammy-cold palms and breathes.</p><p>It’s just a little indulgence.</p><p>(The pressure had spiked after Arthur said <i>chocolate</i>, simply because it sounded damn indecent in that accent and. Fuck.)</p><p>Without thinking, without letting himself think, Alfred undoes his belt, flicks open his fly, and releases some pressure before he can implode.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alfred knows now that Arthur doesn’t like chocolate, so he changes the American-style cookies on his desk to gingersnaps. When Arthur turns up for his private lesson at the end of the day, Alfred offers him one. Forever polite, Arthur nods and says thank you, nibbling primly. By some miracle, he drops no crumbs whatsoever.</p><p>It goes well for ten minutes or so—or maybe Alfred is just so caught up in integers <i>in watching the shadow of Arthur’s collarbone</i> that he doesn’t notice—but then he asks Arthur a question and gets no reply.</p><p>When he looks up, Arthur is staring over his shoulder.</p><p>“Arthur?” Alfred says, tapping the papers on the desk, a brittle rattle. But Arthur hardly seems to notice. “Arthur? You there?”</p><p>The concern comes easy because it’s genuine, the nib of Alfred’s own pen—cheap ballpoint—drawing to a stop at <i>irrational numbers vs. rational numbers the ratio of two integers</i>—</p><p>“Art?” He knocks the underside of the desk, eyebrows raised. “You okay?”</p><p>The sound is louder than he expects, and it does the job: Arthur’s eyes flash back, his attention like a silver minnow. “Sir!” he says, more out of instinct, his tone urgent. “Uh, yes?”</p><p>Alfred sucks a breath in through his teeth. “You’re acting pretty spacy. Not feeling well?”</p><p>(He’s had fantasies like this: leading Arthur back to his dorm room early in the day, early enough that his roommates are still at their extra-curriculars, a hand on his feverish temple, saying <i>get well soon</i> until there’s the tug of Arthur’s fingers on the hem of his jacket, his eyes like frosted glass.)</p><p>“No… sorry, Mr. Jones,” he says absently, and even now his focus keeps returning to the open door of the classroom. “It’s nothing, sorry.”</p><p>It is something, though, and Alfred wants to know what. He bares his teeth in a smile.</p><p>“A friend, is it, or what?”</p><p>He cranes his head to look out into the corridor. Arthur flushes bright red all the way to his ears, frowning, shaking his head.</p><p>“No, it’s—really, it’s nothing,” he rushes out. Arthur picks up his pen and refocuses his attention on the notes before him. “Let’s. Let’s get back to work. Alright?”</p><p>He leans forward, fingertips pulling at the edges of the sheet under Alfred’s palms, but he keeps them in place. There are two boys just barely within view of the open door, leaning against the opposite wall. Talking, laughing. Alfred wonders how he hadn’t noticed them before by the noise they’re making.</p><p>Arthur makes a strangled sort of sound and tries to speak, but Alfred isn’t listening. One of them has dark hair—him, Alfred doesn’t recognise—but the other is familiar enough, tossing back his blond head as he laughs. Bonnefoy, as showy and melodramatic as always, who sits besides Arthur, eats lunch with Arthur, shares a room with Arthur.</p><p>Alfred looks back. Arthur’s blush has grown fiercer now and he cringes, gaze averted.</p><p>“Are you friends with those guys?” Alfred keeps the smile in place on his face, even though it aches to do so. “That’s Francis, yeah?”</p><p>Arthur takes a moment to swallow down some of his embarrassment. He picks at his thumbnail, trying to appear unimpressed. “We’re not friends. Bonnefoy’s a—” he hesitates, here, to catch Alfred’s eye and see the complicit smirk on his face, “—a prat. I can’t stand him.”</p><p>A shiver runs up Alfred’s spine.</p><p>“And the other one is Antonio. He’s got Professor Beilschmidt for maths, so, so you wouldn’t know him. But he’s just as awful.” Arthur smiles to himself, a dark and dangerous one that Alfred wants to keep in a jar. “He doesn’t mess with me any longer, though.”</p><p>Arthur’s self-satisfaction shouldn’t be so attractive. Alfred fights a deep, uneven breath back behind his teeth and exhales through his nose, instead.</p><p>“Is that right.” Alfred’s eyes twinkle. “So you don’t like them?”</p><p>Arthur shakes his head. “Francis is a hideous pervert, but he’s in all of my lessons, I swear.” He drops his voice to a mutter. “Can’t get rid of him.”</p><p>But even as he says it, even as he scowls, the corner of Arthur’s mouth twitches, a hint of a different sort of smile. This time, Alfred isn’t so sure he likes it.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>He tells Matthew over the phone. Sort of, kind of, not really. He’d snuck off campus earlier that evening, and after driving aimlessly for two hours he eventually pulls into the deserted parking lot of a cheesy diner. Alfred loves places like this; the surrendering to pure Americana, Route 66 signs, baseball memorabilia, presidential bobbleheads. Nostalgia settles his soul like nothing else.<p>He slurps noisily from his greasy coffee, rolling a sugar packet between his fingers.</p><p>“There’s someone that I like. For the first time in—I don’t know, since Bella,” he says, and swallows hard, and sips his coffee. Matthew makes an understanding noise through the phone. “They’re just… funny, and likeable, and cranky but in a good way, you know?”</p><p>Matthew scoffs. “That last part sounds like Bella, alright.” There’s a pause that Alfred doesn’t try to fill, and so his brother goes on, “Okay, so? Just wanted to show off?”</p><p>“Nah, it’s…” Alfred fingers the edge of the paper sachet, crinkling under the blunt edge of his nail. “They’re kinda younger than I am.”</p><p>Silence. The sound of the phone being passed from one ear to the other.</p><p>“Alfred,” Matthew says, and though he’s soft-spoken as ever it sounds like a warning. “I know you wouldn’t, but it’s not…” An agonising wait. Alfred can imagine him twisting his hands together. “I know it’s not a student. But if it’s even a colleague, you know, sometimes it’s better to steer clear.”</p><p>Trust Matt to try and give him advice even while dancing around the issue. Alfred forces his nerves down along with more coffee, its hot acidity searing his throat.</p><p>“It’s not a student, Matt, jeez.” He makes his voice light, easy-going. “As if I would ever look at one of my kids that way. C’mon.”</p><p>There is a brittleness to Matthew’s sigh.</p><p>“Yeah.” He lets out a short, relieved laugh, and Alfred wishes he could feel that—the warm rush of it, <i>oh, it’s nothing serious</i>. The easy release from an unspeakable horror. “Sorry, Al. I know.” </p><p>Alfred listens to him pause, breathe, and start again. “So. How much younger?</p><p>Even though Matt isn’t here to see it, Alfred covers his mouth, his miserable grimace too telling. He wishes he were, though, because then his brother would do something. He’d recognise Alfred’s upset, and put it all together, and he would fix it with his usual pragmatic mildness. He would save Alfred from himself.</p><p>Alfred’s not strong enough to do it alone, not when he sees Arthur five days a week. Even a mere glimpse twists his insides up in knots. </p><p>“I mean, they’re <i>legal</i>,” he says wryly, and hates himself so much he nearly chokes. “Nah, it’s weird. Like, different life stage. Even three years can feel like such a gap.”</p><p>“I know what you mean. But, you know, Dad was like… what, nine years older than Mom?”</p><p>Nine years. By April, there will be eleven years’ worth of an age gap between him and Arthur; then twelve again by July. Alfred clutches his head in his free hand.</p><p>His mouth is so dry that he can barely croak out a meaningless, “Yeah.”</p><p>Whatever Matthew says, that’s what Alfred will do. Because Matt has a good head on his shoulders, because though Alfred is louder, prouder, Matthew thinks about things in a way that Alfred never does. Because if Matthew says it, Alfred doesn’t have to put the blame solely on himself.</p><p>(<i>Bullshit</i>, the mathematician part of his brain says. <i>Bullshit</i>: too many unknown variables, too many missing values, for Matthew to present an accurate solution.)</p><p>“Do you really like them?” Matthew’s words are a calm echo through the phone, and despite himself Alfred feels his tensed muscles loosen, his worries ease. “Like, a lot?”</p><p>Alfred scoffs at the middle-school phrasing. <i>I like you, a-lot-a-lot</i>. It’s inappropriate how appropriate it is. The sugar packet is beginning to fatigue under his nervous handling.</p><p>“Yeah. A lot. I haven’t felt this way in a while. In forever.”</p><p>That, at least, is the truth. He listens to Matthew hiss through his teeth.</p><p>“If you really like them, Al, if you haven’t felt like this about someone… Well, I think you have your answer, don’t you? It sounds like you’d regret it if you didn’t give it a shot.”</p><p>The paper splits between his fingers.</p><p>“Always the voice of reason, aren’t ya,” Alfred says, the sugar scattering across the vinyl tabletop. It clings to the brownish ring left by someone’s spilled soda. “What would I do without you, huh?”</p><p>“Probably date them anyway,” comes Matt’s weary-fond voice. Then, “Alright. Thanks for calling me, Al. See you later?”</p><p>“Of course. Bye, Mattie.” Alfred hangs up the phone.</p><p>He’d regret it if he didn’t. He’ll regret it if he does. Alfred drags a finger through the mess of the sugar granules, his skin tacking to itself.</p><p><i>Click</i> and <i>drone</i>.</p><p>The phone feels hot against the side of his face as he holds it there, fighting the urge to re-dial. Alfred takes a drink of his coffee. It’s gone cold.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Matthew has always called him spoiled. Understandably so: Alfred was, or still is, maybe, the golden boy. Maybe not book-smart but certainly math-smart, cute as a boy and handsome as a teenager, and more handsome still as an adult. Unlike Matt, his gangly stage lasted a short year, after which he filled out (okay, not always with muscle; Alfred’s weight fluctuates some good fifteen pounds depending on the season). Matt was just as clever, too, and just as tall and blond as Alfred. But first-borns are first-borns, and the brighter star always shines brightest. Alfred just happened to be older, even if by a scant few minutes.</p><p>The point was—is—that Alfred has always got what he wanted. For Christmas, Easter, birthdays. When their dad got his paycheck and felt indulgent, it was Alfred that got game after game after comic book after comic book. Alfred’s bedroom was gaudy with Superman posters, with Batman figurines, manga and movie merchandise. Matthew’s, on the other hand, remained as bland as the guest room. White walls, white linen, grey carpet. Maybe that could explain why he’s so meek all the time.</p><p>At this stage in his life Alfred can appreciate that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He has a hard time <i>now</i> not getting what he wants. What’s so good about delayed gratification when you can just have gratification?</p><p>(He <i>could</i> have Arthur. Arthur costs nothing, nothing but Alfred’s soul should he be willing, and he’s within reach and so out-of-bounds that it only makes Alfred want it more.)<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Thanksgiving rolls around faster than Alfred can prepare for. He makes hurried last-minute plans with Matthew—again over the phone—and makes last-<i>second</i> travel plans. A promise to meet in Vancouver and waste a day feeling fat. And thankful.<p>(Even though Canada celebrated Thanksgiving, what—a month ago—and so Matt bitched him out over his frantic phone call. <i>Christ, Al, I’ve barely just finished off the leftover turkey from last month</i>. But Canada is weird, so whatever, and his brother only ever requires a little nudging persuasion.)</p><p>They have the week off for it, and for once Alfred is thankful that their school is so damned expensive. Longer vacations for teachers and students alike, though Alfred has spent plenty of holidays catching up on his workload. No rest for the wicked.</p><p>His last lesson, then, is algebra on a Friday afternoon. And Arthur, predictably, dutifully, appears at his desk at the end of the period, workbooks in hand. And Alfred—<i>really</i>—would like to spend at least half an hour looking over Arthur’s shoulder, and accidentally brushing his arm, and. Things like that. And correcting his calculations, too. Yeah.</p><p>But he’s got a flight to catch, in less than three hours and he’s not even started packing yet—besides his spare toothbrush, which he threw into his empty suitcase that morning because he almost always forgets it. Alfred just doesn’t have the time, as much as he would like to.</p><p>“I’m so sorry, Arthur,” Alfred says, hoping the sincerity of his apology is obvious on his face. He grabs at his hair, wincing. “I should have told you at the start of class, but I was late getting started, and honestly I don’t know where my head’s at but it was such a last-minute thing…”</p><p>What he doesn’t expect is for Arthur to look quite so crestfallen. At least, Alfred thinks he is, but the expression vanishes as quickly as it appeared.</p><p>“Nevermind,” Arthur says, though his voice is oddly heavy. “It’s fine. Have a good Thanksgiving, sir.”</p><p>Despite the time pressure, Alfred has never been the type to leave a student in such low spirits. Hell, he hates telling them off for talking in his lessons. Alfred rounds his desk in three long strides and ruffles Arthur’s hair before he can think better of it. It earns him a yelp and a scowl, but Arthur looks quietly pleased once Alfred lets up.</p><p>“Aren’t you doing anything?” Alfred asks. “Not going home for it?”</p><p>“My family lives in <i>England</i>. Where they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.”</p><p>“Oh. Duh.” Alfred blinks once, twice: he knew that already. “But it’s still vacation. Don’t you wanna go home for it?”</p><p>“It’s… I mean, it would be nice. But we don’t really have the money to fly me home for just a week.” Arthur shrugs, and the bitter resignation in his eyes is painfully clear. Alfred’s heart tugs. “So I’m here for the week. I don’t mind, not really. There are others staying in the dorm.”</p><p>Alfred nods, chewing at the inside of his cheek. He tries to offer up a mischievous smile. “You should come with me! I’m going to my brother’s in Canada.” Alfred wiggles his eyebrows. “I could hide you in my suitcase.”</p><p>Arthur smiles, then, which is just what Alfred was going for, and his heart gives another little <i>pull</i> in awful, sickly wonder.</p><p>“While I appreciate the idea, sir,” Arthur says, “it might be a tight fit. A nice thought, though.”</p><p>They laugh together, and god, it’s basically music. Alfred has to shove his hand over his chin to keep his grin from splitting his face. He almost wants to say <i>I’m not joking</i>. On some level, he isn’t.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>“So.”<p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Who’s the infant in the cradle you’re robbing?”</p><p>Alfred nearly chokes on his stuffing. He takes a long, deep drink—partly to help it down, but mostly to calm the mad panic the question gives him.</p><p>“What?” he says, wincing at his raw throat. “Who? Huh?”</p><p>Matthew’s half-smile is like a secret everyone already knows, and dread-foreboding chills Alfred’s blood. “Oh, don’t do that. You know what I’m talking about, you were telling me on the phone—” he pauses to affect Alfred’s voice, honey-thick and loud, “—<i>great sense of humour, wonderful personality, ass like a god</i>—"</p><p>Alfred blushes, clutching his glass so hard it nearly hurts. “I didn’t say any of that!”</p><p>“Ah.” Matthew taps his nose knowingly, fork still in hand so it freckles gravy across the table. “But you’ve always been an ass man.”</p><p>“… You’ve <i>changed</i>, Matt.” Alfred stabs pointedly at his peas, but secretly he’s grateful for the ribbing. “I swear, who’ve you been hanging around with these days?”</p><p>Matt only laughs.</p><p>“You aren’t denying it.” Matthew stops to dab his napkin at the gravy speckling the tablecloth to no effect. He breathes out an unhappy <i>hrm</i> as it smears worse. “So? Come on, who are they? How’d you two meet?”</p><p>Alfred had not thought this far ahead. Why, why, why did he have to open his big mouth?</p><p>“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, knife screeching against his plate. The turkey doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment, but Alfred can hardly go about sticking the knife in his brother’s head instead.</p><p>Matthew cocks an eyebrow. He forks some mashed potato into his mouth. “You were pretty happy to talk about on the phone. I mean, <i>you</i> called <i>me</i>. It didn’t fall flat, did it?”</p><p>Another laugh, and Alfred feels frustration prickle behind his eyelids that has nothing to do with the fucking turkey sinew and everything to do with his brother.</p><p>“No, it did not fall flat, <i>thanks</i>,” Alfred says, “I just haven’t got around to talking to them about it yet.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t have thought you so self-conscious.” Matthew shrugs, but he must sense Alfred’s annoyance because his expression softens. “Al, you’ve always just thrown yourself into these things. It’s not like you to be like… like this.” </p><p>On this last word, he jabs his fork in Alfred’s direction for emphasis. Alfred just chews his turkey—which is cooked to perfection, because for all Alfred’s natural talents, Matt got all the good culinary skills—and shakes his head. It’s infinitely more complicated than he could possibly explain; and besides, he does not want to.</p><p>A little white lie. “It’s the age thing,” says Alfred. He drops his cutlery and fidgets, folding the corner of the tablecloth between his fingers. “It’s hard to get past it.”</p><p>His brother’s eyes widen a fraction behind his glasses. He nods. “Yeah? I do understand that, but…” Matthew leans forward, pulling the dish of stuffing towards himself and meeting Alfred’s gaze. He smiles. “… I’m sure, if they liked you enough, it wouldn’t be a problem. Right, Al?”</p><p>Alfred stares at him, and then down at the back of his hands, at the skin stretched taut over his knuckles. He thinks of Arthur alone in his dorm, the school cold and quiet, and the food no longer tastes of anything in his mouth.</p><p>“Yeah.” Alfred pokes at his own potatoes. “Right.”<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>After Thanksgiving itself, conversation turns to more familiar and much easier topics. They eat and they groan, rolling from table to sofa to bed and back again. It’s so achingly normal that Alfred can pretend he doesn’t spend most of the time thinking of darkened classrooms and bare skin.<p>On the last morning before his flight, Alfred decides he wants to buy something. He unpeels his sweats and throws on some jeans that almost don’t fit before heading out. Matthew reluctantly comes along, though Alfred is starting to wish that he hadn’t.</p><p>“Why are we here again?” Matt grumbles, shifting from foot to foot as Alfred stares at a row of souvenirs.</p><p>“Because.” Alfred tilts back on his heels, pretending to be deep in thought. “I want to get a gift.”</p><p>Matt groans far louder than necessary, teetering on the edge of a whine by the way he drags it out. “You’ve already bought candy. Isn’t that enough?”</p><p>Alfred shakes his head. “That’s for my classes. This <i>isn’t</i>.”</p><p>“That so.” Matthew doesn’t even bother feigning interest, looking around the store even as he speaks. “Who, then?”</p><p>“Eh. I’ll give you three guesses.”</p><p>“Who—that you know—is going to want some cheapo tourist crap?” says Matthew, eyes roving over the maple-patterned everything and finding them lacking. “C’mon, Al. It’s freezing in here, jeez.”</p><p>Alfred clucks. “You didn’t even try, Mattie. Three guesses.”</p><p>Matthew growls under his breath, hands shoved in his pockets. “I don’t know. Your secret object-of-affection?”</p><p>It’s not the wording Alfred would use, though it’s not inaccurate either.</p><p>“Got it in one,” he says, plucking a snow globe off the shelf. Glittery flakes bloom over a Vancouver skyline. “Tacky?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>Alfred huffs, sliding it back into place besides its identical brethren.</p><p>“Surely you’d want something more… personal than this stuff.” Matt frowns. “This is hardly <i>I-want-to-bone-you</i> material.”</p><p>Alfred grabs a handful of keychains. “I don’t wanna come across like that, anyway. And I don’t want to go too ‘personal’ either.”</p><p>Not yet, at least. He flicks through the cluster of fobs and pulls one out. A maple leaf with googly eyes.</p><p>“Well?” Alfred holds it up to Matt’s eye line, shaking it so the pupils jiggle. “What d’you think?”</p><p>Matthew frowns at it. “Al, really? Isn’t it kind of… I don’t know, childish?”</p><p>“Hm.” Alfred closes his fingers around it, letting the shape imprint into his palm. “I don’t know, I think it’s pretty perfect.”</p><p>And he bounces up to the counter, Matthew muttering <i>that should be the deal breaker</i> as he trails at his heels.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>The box of maple candy is obvious on his desk, for Alfred offers a piece to each and every student that passes through his door. That’s the reason he bought it, after all. And, well, to make this seem less weird.<p>His heart jumps and then drops when Arthur comes through the door with Francis at his side. He’s scowling darkly, one hand scrubbing at his forehead, teeth gritted in a hard grimace. Alfred, with nerves now calm, can’t stop himself from mouthing, <i>what’s wrong?</i></p><p>He gets</p><p>
  <i>headache</i>
</p><p>mouthed back.</p><p>Still, as Arthur walks close by his desk, close enough to touch, Alfred can’t stop himself from doing just that. A bare brush of his fingers to Arthur’s forearm, but deliberate enough to get him to stop. Francis raises an eyebrow when Arthur falters. It’s like they’re attached by some invisible string: Francis stops instantly, too, concern apparent on his face. Arthur’s slow in his headache, but eventually he does wave Francis away.</p><p>All while Alfred watches and wonders, do they not <i>speak</i> to each other?</p><p>It makes him jealous. Not that they don’t speak, but that they don’t have to, because Francis shrugs and smirks and strides away without even a parting glance.</p><p>“Hey,” Alfred says quietly, rubbing a circle around Arthur’s elbow. A lingering touch but one easily explained as genuine concern; Arthur is too busy wincing anyway to notice. “Have a good break?”</p><p>Fingers at his temple, Arthur nods. “Yeah. It was okay.”</p><p>Alfred releases Arthur’s arm and reaches into his pocket, feeling it there—the little folded plastic bag smooth and warm from his body heat. Bracing himself, Alfred pulls it out and sneaks the keychain into Arthur’s free hand, hanging lax at his side.</p><p>Arthur’s eyes, half-mast, go suddenly wide.</p><p>“Sir?”</p><p>“I felt kinda bad,” Alfred says, inclining his head low. “Since you were stuck here. So I got you a little something.”</p><p>Arthur flushes, his expression caught between pain and hot delight, and squeezes the gift in his hand. His eyes flick down to look at it.</p><p>“Really—” Arthur goes breathless, and Alfred wonders whether it’s from the headache, “—oh. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Jones.”</p><p>Thrilled at his reaction—better than he had expected—Alfred pushes gently at the small of his back (feels warmth and tension and bones shifting away). He tries not to be too obvious as he watches Arthur head for his seat, though he can’t help a frown from twisting his face when Francis grabs for Arthur’s closed fist.</p><p>Alfred is safe, though: Arthur shoves it in the pocket of his bag before it can be coaxed from him. A swell of strangely possessive pleasure rises in Alfred’s chest. It’s their little secret. Only for him and Arthur to see, even if it’s just a plastic keychain.</p><p>It’s terrible and delightful all at once, and Alfred can’t help but think it was the best $3.95 he’s ever spent.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>There’s a short line of ink across Arthur’s jaw, not unlike a crack on white porcelain. Alfred watches it jump when he smiles, when he grits his teeth in confusion or in anger, as Francis grabs for his workbook, his hair, his shirt collar where it sits askew.<p>The end of the lesson is slow to come, and Arthur is slower still to come up to his desk. Alfred smiles his usual smile and gestures to the side of his own face. He says, “You’ve got a little something, just there.”</p><p>Arthur flushes, mumbling a quiet <i>oh</i>, rubbing his palm against the opposite cheek. That is, the wrong cheek. Alfred chuckles and shakes his head.</p><p>“Nah, the other side,” he says, gesturing again to his own face. Arthur misses the mark by an inch.</p><p>And it would be so easy for Alfred to say, <i>no, no, there</i>, and point his hand a little bit lower and while he thinks this, he thinks of other things, too. Things which he would much rather do than this strange, detached dance.</p><p>It’s easy to, to not think and to simply do, and so he does.</p><p>“Here.” Alfred leans forward, bent slightly to match Arthur’s height. Their eyes meet and he thinks Arthur’s blush might darken, but it could be the flickering of the fluorescent lights. They’re really very close, now. He can feel Arthur’s breath ghost his own cheek, the bizarre mismatched scent of old books, adolescence, and soap.</p><p>Without thinking, Alfred says, “Let me.”</p><p>It happens in a slow-motion flash, a blink-and-you’d-miss-it eternity. Alfred drags the pad of his thumb across the line of ink. Arthur’s skin is hot under his touch, and surprisingly soft, as he rubs the mark away.</p><p>Alfred knows he shouldn’t be doing this. Patting Arthur on the back, tousling his unruly hair, nudging elbows when they’re working side-by-side—already they were pushing the edge of appropriate contact. There is no excusing this. Something squirms in the bottom of Alfred’s stomach at the way Arthur’s eyes shift back and forth, at Alfred’s face and then away, over and over.</p><p>One, two, three. Alfred lowers his hand back to his side. Arthur isn’t blushing anymore; his face is whiter than a sheet of paper, except for the reddening bloom where Alfred’s hand had been.</p><p>“Ah.” Arthur’s head turns to the side, hiding his burning cheek from Alfred’s view. “… Thank you.”</p><p>Alfred feels his own face grow hot. “S’okay.”</p><p>He whips back round to his desk in a flurry of movement, trying to ignore the horrid rising heat beneath his skin and the desire to go beyond this, beyond talking, because now he’s started this there’s no going back. Alfred clutches the edge of the desk hard enough to leave grooves in his palms.</p><p>Take a moment, he tells himself. A deep breath he disguises beneath the clearing of his throat. He snatches a question sheet from a pile of papers.</p><p>When he turns back to Arthur, he’s able to mask the blazing <i>something</i> that has taken hold of him.</p><p>For the first time, Arthur is the one to break the silence.</p><p>“Algorithms. We’ve—” he stutters, “—we’ve started algorithms, haven’t we?”</p><p>Alfred sinks mutely into his seat.</p><p>“Mm. Yes, yeah, we did.” Alfred says. He massages his temples—<i>his hands on Arthur’s face fingers holding his jaw his mouth pressing him into the wall and sinking his teeth his lips his tongue</i>—and slumps a little lower still. “Of course. Algorithms.”</p><p>He casts his eyes down to the floor. A googly-eyed maple leaf hangs from the zip tag of Arthur’s bag.<br/>
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<br/>
<br/>
Once their revision session ends, Arthur makes his goodbye brief, more subdued than usual. Alfred can’t bring himself to say anything, offering only a half-hearted wave as Arthur practically runs for the door.</p><p>What is he <i>doing?</i></p><p>Alfred shakes his head as if that could dislodge the thoughts that have taken root there. Manic energy fizzes under his skin with such intensity that Alfred finds himself walking laps around the classroom, though he gives Arthur’s desk a wide berth, hands squeezed into fists so tight that there are deep red crescents cut into the meat of his palms.</p><p>He grabs his jacket from his desk and shoves it on, though when he starts to pack up he knocks a stack of homework clear on to the floor. The scattered arc of white papers is enough to make Alfred let out a strangled cry. Inchoate frustration spikes through him like hot metal.</p><p>He can’t handle this. He never <i>wanted</i> this. The future had never been anything that Alfred wasted much mental energy on, but that was because he had only ever allowed for one future in the first place: a big church wedding and two point five kids and a cat and a dog—Labrador Retriever cross, what else—a fire pit grill set up in the yard, his house bracketed tidily by a white picket fence.</p><p>His mom always used to say he was destined for something different.</p><p>He collapses back into his seat, pushing his hair back off his forehead. He stares at the mess on the floor but he hardly sees it.</p><p>“Fuck,” Alfred says.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dreams have been around for a long time, always at the edge of his peripheral vision. Lurking like some unknowable creature in the murky darkness of sleep. In the light of day, Alfred has become quite able to block them out, save for brief moments of indulged fantasy. A necessity he allows himself. Better to relieve the steam of a pressure cooker than wait for it to explode. It isn’t so simple at night, though, when Alfred’s subconscious is free to run roughshod over his flimsy self-control.</p><p>Alfred wakes up in the middle of the night for the third time in as many days, hard and hot, the sheets clinging to him like plastic wrap. He can feel the shape of Arthur’s name in his mouth still, the phantom memory of his elfin face. Arthur’s weight, the warmth of his breath; it had all seemed so real that Alfred almost expects to feel a solid body when he throws his arm across the bed. But, no, of course—he’s alone.</p><p>He sits up, releasing a shaky sigh, and reaches for the glass at his bedside to take a deep drink of tepid water. This does nothing to disperse the trappings of the dream. They have become more intense, lately. Or perhaps just <i>more</i> in general: now Alfred dreams of touching Arthur’s face, only gently, and kissing that soft-tender spot at the hinge of his jaw before teasing him open. He dreams of licking the flat of Arthur’s teeth, tasting blood where he’s worried his bottom lip to shiny soreness. His hands would settle first on Arthur’s neck, but then the kiss would deepen and they would dip down the sharp rise of his shoulder blades and lower, lower still, finding the hard edge of his smart black belt where his shirt was tucked into his pants, and it wouldn’t take much effort at all to loosen and lift his shirt, revealing the stretch of smooth skin above his tailbone, and… and…</p><p>Hand knotting in the hem of his t-shirt, Alfred stumbles to the bathroom, clumsy with the veil of sleep still on him. He twists the shower dial far into the red gradient. It’s almost too much effort to undress; leaving the clothes where they fall, Alfred whips his shirt off over his head, shucking his boxers and stepping over them into the gasping hot stream of water.</p><p>His hands were steady before but they shake now, one flattened against the tiles and the other tightening around the base of his aching cock. He doesn’t have the strength nor the will to tell himself to stop.</p><p>When he comes, Arthur’s name a mantra in his mind, Alfred can’t keep back his strangled cry. Imagining those eyes like the sea once the storm has cleared.</p><p>(The pure crystalline look of Arthur’s gaze—tentative trust.)</p><p>Alfred is so sick of dreaming.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Alfred sees Arthur at his door—early again for class, distracted with tying up a loose shoelace—and decides to limit his looks to one. At least during the lesson itself. It shouldn’t be hard with a class of sixteen boys, not really. He’s brimming with dreams he doesn’t know how to ignore anymore; it’s best not to add fuel to a raging fire.<p>(It happens even so. Alfred is hardly aware of it, the involuntary slide of his gaze across the room. Every little thing draws his attention. Arthur’s quiet murmur to Francis, though they should be working in silence; the sombreness of his concentration as he copies equations from Alfred’s examples; the bony bracketing of his arms folded over his desk.)</p><p>The times he’s able to catch himself, Alfred pivots away to glare at the board, instead, printing <i>add or subtract same number to / from minuend to subtrahend</i>, his jaw locked hard enough that a migraine throbs at his temples.<br/>
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<br/>
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The hour comes to its inevitable close, no matter how desperately Alfred does or does not want it. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickle as the bell sounds, and to hide his fraying nerves, Alfred spends five minutes wiping the whiteboard cleaner than it’s ever been in all his years teaching. </p><p>As the noise of his students abate, the low pitch of background conversation continues. When Alfred dares look, he sees Arthur and Francis both standing perpendicular to one another—Arthur leaning against his desk, his back to Alfred, Francis’ lean and handsome face in profile. They talk and talk, seemingly unaware of the time. A bolus of anger lodges in Alfred’s throat.</p><p>Francis is less handsome and more smug, Alfred decides. He watches as his hand lifts to Arthur’s shoulder and gives it a playful push—not so hard as to hurt, but enough that Arthur pushes back. Alfred’s molars grind together.</p><p>But then, Francis’ expression, the register of his voice is changing; he glances at the wall clock and then over at Alfred—Alfred summons a smile—and back to Arthur once again.</p><p>Alfred tries not to perk up so obviously as Francis swaggers away. Always Mr. Popular, he meets someone just outside the threshold of the classroom with a flick of his hair, a smile, and a laugh like warm thunder. Arthur has turned just enough to watch him go, but then he lingers there, at his desk, staring down at his shoes.</p><p>Alfred’s chest tightens. “Ready?” he calls out, flipping through a folder of papers, an almost performative display. Professional. Appropriate.</p><p>The wretched cringing look on Arthur’s face is almost enough to make Alfred cancel the session altogether. But still he approaches, tugging a spare chair up to Alfred’s own.</p><p>“Yeah. Okay.”</p><p>Without Alfred’s being aware of it, their half-hour had grown closer to an hour recently, but this time the extra minutes are as painful as the lesson before. Awkward, disconnected. Alfred can’t help but notice when he leans over to reach for the textbook: the way Arthur’s shoulder lists away from him, a distance so deliberate that it might as well be a yawning ravine. It would be impossible to <i>not</i> notice because he’s been doing it the entire time, veering away whenever Alfred draws close. He’s quieter, too, in a way that he never was before even when in a foul mood.</p><p>Alfred wonders, for the first time since this all began, if that touch alone was too far.<br/>
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<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s been nearly three weeks since Alfred’s hand slipped, and Arthur is just beginning to ease back into their comfort zone. Alfred’s fear of too-much-too-soon were unfounded, it seems, but he’s been careful to treat Arthur like a frightened animal nonetheless. Maintaining some distance, his hands and voice low, never meeting his gaze for so long as he would like to. Just to be safe.<p>Instead, they talk. And it’s nice, and Alfred loves to hear him, and they eat gingersnaps and debate absurd things like, like tea versus coffee, when Arthur gets sick of staring at numbers.</p><p>After arguing about football and junk food for seven minutes, Alfred brings up family.</p><p>“I told you about my brother, right?” asks Alfred, rooting through his drawer. “He lives in Canada—aha!”</p><p>The cheesy photobooth strip fills Alfred with tenderness even now. It was some years ago, a visit to the crappy local theme park of their childhood town, purely for nostalgia’s sake, and Alfred had insisted on a souvenir picture. He slides it over the desktop.</p><p>“Here.” He taps his nail against his brother’s smiling face. “That’s him.”</p><p> “Huh. You look a lot alike.”</p><p>Alfred flips the strip back towards himself. The look on Matt’s face—fond but weary willing—is perhaps one of the most honest photos of him that Alfred has. His own million-watt grin, his eyes squeezed shut at the force of it, is so different from his brother’s moderated joy. But no less honest.</p><p>“Twins, you know,” Alfred says, smiling at himself, “so I’m not surprised. He’s a real good guy.”</p><p>Arthur squints at the back of the picture strip. “It should be <i>Matt and I</i>,” he mutters.</p><p>Alfred quirks an eyebrow, turning to see what has Arthur’s attention. In Alfred’s own scrawled script, it reads: <i>Me and Matt – 2007 – Blue Mountain Park.</i></p><p>“I s’pose it should.” Alfred’s voice is wry. Trust Arthur to pick him up on his grammar. “What about your family? Any siblings?”</p><p>(Wouldn’t want to let slip that he already knows.)</p><p>Arthur’s mouth twists, a frown darkening his expression. “I have four. And I’m fairly sure they hate my guts.”</p><p>Alfred catches Arthur’s eyes, maintaining it for a deliberate long moment. “C’mon, everyone feels that way about their siblings.” He drops his gaze to the photo, bending one tired corner under his nail. “Trust me, they care.”</p><p>Arthur shakes his head vigorously. “You don’t know them. What they’re like.”</p><p>His voice drops to a hardly audible mutter, but still Alfred hears <i>prick</i>, and pretends not to.</p><p>“Well, I guess I can’t speak for them. But I can speak as a brother, and I’d bet good money that they do even if they don’t always show it.” Alfred rests his chin on his hands. “Do you care about them?”</p><p>Arthur’s mouth opens then closes, some colour coming into his cheeks. “I mean, I don’t… I don’t <i>not</i> care. I suppose.”</p><p>Alfred throws out his arms with rather too much enthusiasm. He narrowly misses hitting Arthur’s face, but rather than flinching away Arthur huffs out a startled laugh.</p><p>“See! You care. They care. You wait and see, it’s always like that when you’re—” (<i>young</i>) “—that age.”</p><p>And yet, despite his flawless logic, Arthur does not seem all that impressed. His brow knits.</p><p>“My dad,” he says, so quietly that Alfred almost doesn’t hear him, “my dad doesn’t. I know that much.”</p><p>Alfred folds his arms back on to the desk. “How do you know that? Has he ever said that?”</p><p>“Well, no, of course not,” grumbles Arthur, “but he sent me <i>here</i>. When I didn’t want to go. And I told him that, and even though he knew—” Arthur cuts himself off, catching the upset in his own voice. Alfred wants so badly to touch his shoulder.</p><p>Arthur stops to breathe, a short rattling breath, his eyes distant but bright with brittle fury. More composed, he continues, “And he said he was doing it for me. Which is absolute shi—rubbish, because I never wanted to go here in the first place. Then he gets angry at me, and he tells me that I should be more grateful since I’d be getting such a good education, but he isn’t even paying for me to go here! The scholarship covers everything, so it’s more like he wanted to get rid of me.”</p><p>The words rush out of him so quickly that he has to stop again to breathe. Arthur stares down at the table, hands clenched into fists, his face burning with hot misery. Sympathy twinges in Alfred’s stomach and something else besides, which he knows should not be there.</p><p>“I’m sure that’s not true,” Alfred says, forcing the feelings away as he—tries not to, and fails—presses one hand to the tight hunch of Arthur’s shoulders. “He probably just wanted what was best for you, no matter how what that took.”</p><p>Arthur snorts, but he doesn’t push Alfred’s hand away like he expects him to. Instead, Arthur leans into it just barely; and when he looks up, his expression is tender, fragile. He says, “You don’t know my family. My dad… he’s just, he’s not like that.”</p><p>“Aw, c’mon.” Alfred ducks his head to Arthur’s bowed one, letting his eyes twinkle. “They love you.” He tries for a joke: “I bet if you died, they’d cry at your funeral. I would and I’ve only known you half a semester.”</p><p>Arthur’s snort, this time, is louder, warmer, more genuine. Alfred can’t help the hot-tight knot that ties up his stomach at the sound of it.</p><p>“Wow, what a consolation.” He meets Alfred’s gaze again, with soft eyes and a softer smile. Then Arthur sighs, and the strange intimate spell is broken, and Alfred can’t quite pin down the feelings that freeze in his chest. Perhaps it’s better if he doesn’t. “Thanks anyway, sir. Can’t say I agree, though.”</p><p>“Teenagers always say that. You’ll see.”</p><p>It’s at once a relief and a disappointment when their conversation turns itself back to junk food (“You’ve never heard of <i>In’n’Out</i>?!” his own incredulous cry). Even as these moments make him so happy, Alfred can sense the danger cresting within him alongside. He imagines a klaxon shrieking in his skull, red warning lights in the cavity of his chest. <i>Stop now while you still can</i>.</p><p>Alfred’s fingers tingle with second-hand warmth.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s purely out of boredom that Alfred starts to wonder, just how could it happen, if it could happen? A thought exercise, nothing more than idle curiosity. The depths of his mind are a dangerous thing in the small hours of morning, blood in his veins thrumming with lazy heat, the shadow of sleep lulling him into this dark corner.<p>He is thinking too hard, too much, and the scenarios he dreams up are detailed beyond reason.</p><p>Grab Arthur by the wrist—like that day, his first desperate contact—and pin him to the wall and whisper hotly in his ear. Offer him gingersnaps and tacky trinkets and praise, genuine praise, until even his collarbones flush with pleasure. Alfred could teach him so much more, an equation not so simple nor so elaborate as those in his textbooks, things that can feel not just good but great, that no one else, not even Francis, could offer.</p><p>It shouldn’t, wouldn’t be a problem, but once he allows the topic trespass in his mind, he can’t compartmentalise it any longer. Even in his other lessons, little things send him spiralling: a student folding back his shirt sleeve; a looming thundercloud at the horizon’s edge; the smell of wet grass and old paper. It’s so distracting that three times that week he bumps into his desk while teaching. It should be embarrassing but instead it fills Alfred only with chilling dread. And of course it’s worse in his time with Arthur, when he wants nothing more than to feel his pulse beneath the butterfly-thin skin of his wrist.</p><p>Somehow, though, he’s able to keep enough control that Arthur doesn’t notice anything amiss.</p><p>“The great thing is, about math,” says Alfred, jotting notes into Arthur’s book with more manic energy than usual, “is that there’s no way you can go wrong once you know what you’re doing. If you know the rules—<i>pow</i>. Everything falls into place.”</p><p>He slides the book over towards Arthur, though looking at it now from a distance Alfred sees the cacophony of sprawling numbers and symbols he’s created. His final answer is overlarge at the bottom of the page, the paper nearly splitting where he’s circled it over and over.</p><p>Alfred feels sweat trickle down his spine. He says, “Perfect.”</p><p>Arthur’s nose wrinkles, and despite his sick cold fear, Alfred is absolutely enamoured by it.</p><p>“But that’s exactly why I hate it,” Arthur starts, in the tone of voice that’s just about irritated and yet not-quite, an almost domestic frustration that makes Alfred ache. “Everything’s so… caged in. There’s no such thing as creative liberties or reader interpretation in mathematics.”</p><p>“Aha-ha, I was never good at stuff like that. Essays.” Alfred smiles behind his fingers. “My ideas were good apparently, but I could never get them out right. And I didn’t have the patience to figure out how … See, you can’t find the square root here because it would be difficult to work with. You have to use surds instead.”</p><p>Arthur nods absently. Alfred wants to smooth the scowl from his face, his smile so much better, so much rarer, a lop-sided grin that’s basically <i>rakish</i>. Arthur probably has no idea just how charming it is.</p><p>Alfred thinks, <i>I could do so many things to take that frown off your face.</i></p><p>He could crack a joke, and Arthur would laugh out of deferent politeness in the same way he always does, light and low and slightly awkward, because it’s not really all that funny. Alfred could say <i>I like you</i>, something cliché like that, and tug Arthur close by the knot of his tie, and kiss down the slender column of his throat until his teeth met his collarbone. He could do so many things, a million scenarios playing out in the short span of a breath.</p><p>He shouldn’t. Won’t.</p><p>Arthur’s leg is close, close enough that Alfred can sense it through the fabric of his pants, because he had to sit and watch Alfred’s working out to understand, rather than be talked through it. Alfred can smell his shampoo, a neutral citrus, and the winter cold on his hair; the scent of earl grey when he speaks.</p><p>He looks at Arthur for a very long second. And Arthur, staring at the mess of Alfred’s spidering scrawl, doesn’t realise. Never realises, never seems to see anything beyond the safety of what they are, where they are. Teacher, student.</p><p>The hand that brushes his to reach a pen is enough. Alfred can live with just that—</p><p>—is what he tells himself, disbelieving, and wants to follow the crease-line high up Arthur’s thigh from how his pants have been pressed.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>In his defense, it’s not like Alfred has ever felt anything but platonic fondness for his students. Even as a grad student he had a general rule—twenty-one-plus. A partner who could at least share a beer in a bar after a long week. Even at twenty-one himself, eighteen-year-olds had felt like a whole other species.<p>Nevermind anyone under the age of sixteen.</p><p>Alfred is going to hell.</p><p>But, yeah, it’s the accent. Exciting in its foreign familiarity—what American doesn’t love an English accent, the Hollywood trope of the suave pretty villain. Maybe Alfred wouldn’t care if not for Arthur’s voice, the sultry sweetness of it sometimes but also the natural ease with which he swore.</p><p>Right. Right.</p><p>
  <i>… Right.</i>
</p><p>There’s his smile, too, though, the way he straightens his tie, and the lovely white flash of his stomach when he stretches at the end of the day, his shirt (not quite long enough for a growing boy) untucking itself.</p><p>Alfred hardly sleeps, these days. His attempts are fruitless, infuriating, his sleeplessness resistant to any tactic gleaned from the internet. It’s incredibly difficult when all he’s got on his mind is an English teenager with a smart mouth. Especially his mouth.</p><p>Arthur is, after all, pretty smart. And he acts so much older than he is. Fourteen going on forty, he had joked once, and Arthur had laughed for god’s sake.</p><p>(But that’s precisely it, isn’t it: he <i>acts</i> older, not <i>is</i> older, for all the desperate justifications that Alfred’s broken mind supplies. There’s no hiding the cold mathematical truth of it. For all his old-age-cynicism, Arthur is a child and Alfred an adult.)</p><p>He can’t help the dreams, though, can he? And he can’t stop helping Arthur, because he needs it to pass. It just wouldn’t be fair. It is Alfred’s responsibility, as a teacher, to provide for a student.</p><p>Alfred cradles his head in one hand and holds a glass of coke in the other, the night creeping over him. There are sleeping pills next to his elbow on the table, too, leftovers from an awful bout of stress-insomnia back in college. He could take them, and maybe he’d be free of this, of these dreams, hazy and yet so lucid as to shock him when he wakes alone in bed. Dreams of Arthur’s lakelike eyes, the funny quirk of his mouth when amused. More than that—Arthur’s sigh pitched with pleasure, his skin like warm ivory, the feel of his thighs under Alfred’s fingers, pliant and willing.</p><p>The glass has gone warm in his sweating grip, the night bleeding away. Alfred briskly tosses a pill into his mouth and swallows a mouthful of stale coke.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>The end of December arrives much like November’s did. Alfred barely notices the changing season but for his students appearing layered with scarves, talking of the potential of snow, a general excited buzz as the end of the year approaches.<p>It reminds him that, oh yeah, <i>Christmas</i> is coming, sneaking up on him just like Thanksgiving, and Alfred still hasn’t bought any gifts yet so he’s completely fucked. Matthew won’t be happy. Maybe he can pull the <i>I’m-a-poor-teacher</i> card again, though it doesn’t exactly wash with a private school salary. Then again, the intensity of his workload doesn’t exactly allow much time for leisurely browsing.</p><p>His anxiety is compounded by the weather. Alfred usually asserts that cold is a state of mind, but looking out the frosted window to see students in a penguin-huddle as they move from place to place, even he has to yield to hat, scarf, and gloves. And once he’s noticed it, it’s impossible to ignore. Alfred’s always been more of a summer sort of person. He could offer to fly him and Matt somewhere hot for the winter—there’s no way he’s spending it in Canada. Though Christmas wouldn’t feel like Christmas if not for the scrim of snowmelt, the hot sweet scouring taste of homemade mulled wine warming them through.</p><p>There’s the usual school party planned, mostly for the students though faculty members are expected to attend, under the pretext of supervision. Inevitably one of the senior staff will reveal their contraband as the night wears on and the students dissipate: a cooler neatly packed with champagne, a generous gift for another semester’s hard work. It’s fun in a ‘letting off steam’ kind of way, the euphemistic discussions about problem students no one need name and the latest intra-department drama. (The faculty has always been rather incestuous; hardly a month goes by without some new coupling. Alfred has always avoided it with the smug saying <i>never dip your pen into the company ink</i>, but considering his current situation he deserves to be shot for it.)</p><p>It’s an open secret that alcohol almost always finds its way among the students as well as the teachers, though mostly in the older grades. No matter how thorough dorm checks are, teenage boys are innately able to undermine authority, and so they turn a blind eye so long as no one is seriously sick or hurt. In the years that Alfred’s taught here, he’s witnessed PG-13 behaviour at most. Scenes of mild peril, moderate profanity, male nudity.</p><p>When Alfred asks in his classes who’s going, most hands go up, though in his final one of the week, he notes that Arthur’s does not. At least, not till Francis grabs his hand and hoists it into the air for him.</p><p>He asks Arthur later, alone, why not.</p><p>“Not the party sort,” says Arthur with a dismissive wave, and Alfred once again wonders at the old soul in this boy’s skin. “Francis is dragging me along, though. If I can’t shake him off.”</p><p>Alfred laughs and nods, charmed at the mental image even as wretched jealousy eats at him.</p><p>“You’re going home this time, right?” says Alfred, simply because he can’t imagine any parent mean enough to leave their child in a school dorm over the winter break. Arthur’s father, as it turns out, is no exception.</p><p>At the question, Arthur beams. Alfred has never seen anything like it, certainly never on Arthur’s face, and his breath hitches before it even reaches his throat. </p><p>“Yes,” Arthur says, “I am, actually.”</p><p>Alfred grins straight back at him, the million-watt one he reserves for special occasions, despite the sudden ache in his lungs—his heart—his gut, and sincerely he says, “I’m so glad.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alfred goes to the party in the end, dithering on the decision until Elizabeta—his favourite teacher within the humanities department—asks if he is, and Alfred can’t think fast enough to say no.</p><p>(And secondly, secretly, it’s because of Arthur and Francis and the fact that one is dragging along the other, that they’re going together, and really, it’s fine, because Alfred is concerned much more than he is jealous.)</p><p>Alfred is an expert mingler, and so at first he talks with almost everyone, students and teachers alike. Sure, Alfred may be a nerd but he’s a good conversationalist, too, and by all accounts pretty easy on the eyes. He garners no small amount of attention from the younger of the female teachers, and maybe some male. And the geekiness, well, there’s plenty of students who are thrilled to talk about comic books, or video games, or even applied mathematics now freed from a classroom context.</p><p>Still, after an hour and a half Alfred is bored of tittering and small talk, and this early in the evening the only drinks available are water and oversweet punch. Not that Alfred plans on drinking alcohol tonight. No, for tonight he is actually going to perform his chaperone duties and watch out for his students. At least, for one particular student. </p><p>Keen for a break, and to get his bearings, Alfred retreats to the side of the hall, sipping his water beneath a festive garland of balloons and paper snowflakes.</p><p>He doesn’t spot Arthur for another fifteen minutes until, suddenly, he does—his body reacting before his brain, a spike of excited fear—there in the near corner, cradling his own plastic cup in one hand and the other held over his brow as he scans the room. Alfred had meant to keep his distance, but to speak with Arthur alone outside the confines of the classroom is such a rare opportunity that he doesn’t even try to resist. Alfred weaves through the laughing crowd and dangling streamers.</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>Arthur jumps, jarred out of his concentration.</p><p>“Oh! Good evening, sir.” He relaxes visibly once he sees that it’s Alfred at his side. Alfred wishes that he wouldn’t, because he can’t be trusted any more so than a stranger. Probably less, in fact. But Arthur offers him a smile like they’re sharing a secret, like they’re in cahoots, his voice taking on a sardonic note as he goes on, “Are you having fun?”</p><p>“Ha, sure, I guess,” Alfred says, nudging his glasses back up his nose. “How about you? Looks like Francis managed to drag you here after all.”</p><p>Arthur shrugs one shoulder, frowning at the mention of Francis’ name. It shouldn’t please Alfred quite as much as it does. </p><p>“Mm. I’m looking for him, actually. He disappeared with Antonio and Gilbert earlier, and I’m worried about what they’re planning.”</p><p>The hairs on the back of Alfred’s neck bristle. Arthur is very good at raising his hopes and dashing them in short succession. It’s starting to feel like Francis is never very far from Arthur’s attention.</p><p>Chewing his cheek, Alfred pauses; tucks his hands into his pockets, swaying absently to the music.</p><p>“I haven’t seen him, sorry,” he says.</p><p>Arthur sighs and continues his nervy scanning of the crowds. His nose is a little pink, and Alfred wonders whether already the boys have snuck in their own stash of wine coolers and beer. They must have started early if it is already filtering down to the students of Arthur’s grade, or perhaps Arthur’s friends have their own supplies, and now Alfred wonders whether Arthur trusts Francis enough to get him back to the dorm if drunk—</p><p>—and just as Alfred imagines himself leading Arthur down the school’s quiet and empty corridors, there’s a shout, a splash, and a very familiar, very angry yelp. Arthur, sopping wet, wiping his sleeve across his bewildered face. The sound of rowdy laughter draws Alfred’s attention. Beyond Arthur’s sodden shoulder, three students are nearly bent double. Francis, Antonio, Gilbert, that’s what he had said. Looks like Arthur was right to be suspicious, though you don’t really need three people to plan and then steal a bowl full of punch.</p><p>The sickly smell of it fills the air. Alfred would be laughing along with them if it weren’t for the fact that Arthur is wearing a thin white shirt, and the punch has soaked it through. He would be laughing—if it were any other student—if not for Arthur’s ribs and bellybutton, the wet fabric clinging to his skinny shape.</p><p>“You <i>fuckers</i>,” Arthur roars, just before he takes off after the three with a wild look in his eye.</p><p>Alfred should do something, stop them at least. Yet he simply watches, the sharp shadow of Arthur’s shoulder blades apparent through his shirt, and he coughs into his empty cup. When winter break’s over, Alfred is going to give those three detention.<br/>
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He only sees Arthur once more that evening after the punch incident, plucking at his damp, stained shirt and cringing.</p><p>“Bugger this,” Alfred hears him say, and then the four—friends, apparently, despite it all—disappear into the thronging hall.</p><p>Alfred doesn’t bother looking for Arthur for the rest of the night. He doesn’t need to. The image is burned into his brain; without trying, when he closes his eyes, he sees Arthur there soaked to the skin, shivering with the wet cold.</p><p>Instead, Alfred spends his last half-hour against the wall, pretending to nurse a drink, his jacket pulled across his front to conceal his lap.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Alfred sees Arthur with Francis again, very briefly the next day, just as he’s packing a briefcase of assignments to mark into his car.<p>His eyes are red-rimmed-yellow, and his hair, still punch-sticky, up at odd angles as he elbows Francis hard in the side. Antonio and Gilbert flank them, looking not so worse for wear, laughing into the back of their hands when Arthur isn’t looking. They must be getting ready to go home themselves, each loaded with bags. Behind them their luggage scrapes against the concrete of the courtyard.</p><p>Alfred rolls his eyes, repressing the icy-hot squirming that comes to life in his belly.</p><p>He’s got a whole two weeks to forget about those four, about Arthur and the dregs he pulls up within him. Alfred will forget. It just takes time, distance, the sensory overload of too much food and carols, his brother for company and the resinous scent of pine needles.</p><p>(That didn’t work at Thanksgiving.)</p><p>The four boys turn the corner of the building, disappearing from view—from Alfred’s mind—and he lowers himself into the front seat of his car. Alone, unseen, Alfred drops his forehead to the cold steering wheel, once, twice, three times.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Christmas comes fast and furious and bitterly cold, because Alfred can’t convince Matthew overseas. Snow looks good as it’s falling, when it first settles in pristine white drifts, but give it a day and it compacts into hideous icy grey misery. Matt, of course, loves it nevertheless. Alfred doesn’t.<p>But they have snowball fights, anyway, and manage to build half a snowman—shit, just how did they spend hours out in it when they were children?—and Alfred tries to forget. He makes himself forget.</p><p>(At night when it’s dark and Matthew has carried his bags to the guest room after dinner—though he must have slept there a thousand times by now—Alfred remembers, a guilty revisiting of his dreams in waking reality, and he fists his cock tight thinking of Arthur.)<br/>
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In the end, Alfred doesn’t bother to think up an excuse for his giftlessness. Instead he buckles, panics, and manages to buy a gorgeous new hockey stick and a pair of ice skates before Christmas Eve. When morning breaks, Alfred is excited despite himself—the very memory of Christmases past suffusing him with nostalgic wonder—and he grabs Matt’s presents from under the tree. There’s no real way to disguise a hockey stick and skates, but his brother still beams at the sight of them.</p><p>“Merry Christmas, my favourite twin,” Alfred recites, the same little joke more instinctive than intentional these days. Then, as nicely as possible, he says, “And just so you know, we’re never spending the holidays here again.”</p><p>Matthew simply laughs and hugs him, one-armed. The box he gives Alfred in turn is surprisingly weighty; when Matt hands it over, Alfred lets out an <i>oof</i>, bracing his arms around it.</p><p>“Jeez, what’s in here!” he exclaims, glancing at Matthew’s face but seeing only an enigmatic smile there. Over-eager as ever, Alfred tears into the chintzy paper. He stops at the sight of a blank brown cardboard box, curious, until he strips it free of parcel tape and unfolds the lid.</p><p>“Bro,” Alfred breathes, staring at the contents like they’re something holy. “Matt. You serious? I love you.”</p><p>Matthew scratches the back of his neck, sheepish.</p><p>“It really isn’t that much—” is all he manages to say before Alfred is squeezing the life out of him.</p><p>“Oh man oh man oh <i>man</i>,” Alfred gabbles, one arm wrapped around Matthew and the other digging through the box. “Look at these games! <i>Earthbound, Chrono Trigger</i>—holy shit, where the hell did you get them? How much did they cost?”</p><p>Matthew struggles out of his grasp, embarrassed to a luminous blush at Alfred’s effusiveness. “A good friend offered, trying to make some space. They’ve been down in his basement for ages. And I know you liked them as a kid.”</p><p>“’Liked them’ is an understatement. Man, mom used to have to wrestle me away from the TV, I nearly failed everything playing this stuff. Oh my <i>goooood</i>.” Alfred clutches the SNES to his chest, knowing the weight of it, the slippery plastic and its chunky shape, all so familiar that it nearly makes him cry. “Best Christmas ever. You, me, we’re setting this up <i>right now</i>.”</p><p>Matthew’s red face is more pleased than awkward, now, and he reaches for a tangled nest of cables in the depths of the box. His new hockey stick leans against the arm of the couch, and Alfred feels a lump form in his throat.</p><p>He doesn’t deserve this.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It would be naïve, or rather straight-up stupid, to think Matthew wouldn’t bring it up again. That doesn’t stop Alfred from wincing when he does, the rising, writhing fear that just from looking at him Matthew will <i>know</i>.<p>“Any luck with your… er, your person?”</p><p>“No,” Alfred says, a little too briskly considering the gentleness of Matt’s question. He nudges his glasses, rubbing the imprints they leave on the bridge of his nose. He sniffs once, and adds, “I don’t think I’m going to say anything.”</p><p>Matthew stills, remote hanging slack in his hand. In the background, the clipped chatter of the television from his channel-hopping stops abruptly.</p><p>“You’re giving up?” he asks, incredulous. “Seriously? You’re not even going to try?”</p><p>Alfred’s annoyance is unreasonable, disproportionate, but he can’t handle Matt like this, not when they’re talking about Arthur and he has to lie. He’s sick to the teeth with it. Rather than look at Matthew, he stares at the SNES set up by the TV stand, the neat column of games stacked just beside. God, he hates himself so much that he wants to vomit.</p><p>“It’s more trouble than it’s worth, Matt,” he says, adjusting his position on the couch. He challenges Matthew’s gaze. “I don’t… I can’t.”</p><p>Matthew frowns, refusing to back down from Alfred’s glare. He’s had enough years of it to develop good defenses. “But you really liked them, didn’t you?”</p><p>Alfred doesn’t want to hear this. It makes everything too real.</p><p>“Yeah. I, I do,” he says, and it’s the honest truth. “Look—”</p><p>Alfred takes a deep breath, and Matt, somehow, goes stiller, tensing like a nervous cat despite the lax sprawl of his limbs across the couch.</p><p>“I really don’t want to talk about it. Please,” Alfred says, finally, lamely. He wants so badly to tell him why, in part to unload his guilt but more so because they share everything, him and Matt. They always have, ever since they first learned to speak. And before then, even, in their odd little twin language that only they understood.</p><p>Silence settles. An awkward, gravid one that might as well be a physical thing. Matthew raises his eyebrows, a strange look coming over him—startled hurt but also worry, a look that stings Alfred like a slap—but then he shrugs, his face shuttering behind cool detachment as he focuses back on the television screen.</p><p>“Okay,” he says, a little sharply. “I won’t make you.”</p><p>The screen flashes red-green-yellow across the floorboards.<br/>
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A day later, after a thorny morning of bare-minimum conversation (<i>pass the syrup; coffee?; gonna turn up the thermostat</i>), Matthew sits opposite him at the kitchen table with a deliberateness that’s impossible to ignore. Alfred’s been expecting it, anyway: one of them always breaks. They wouldn’t be as close as they are otherwise.</p><p>His voice is matter of fact, no-nonsense. “What’s up, Al?” he asks, and it’s the exact same voice their mother would adopt when they were plagued by some teenage angst. It makes Alfred want to cry.</p><p>“Nothing,” he says, mostly because he can’t think of what else. He reaches for a clumsy joke, “Nothing’s up, besides the ceiling.”</p><p>Matthew breathes out a short, sharp sigh, even as Alfred forces a half-hearted grin on to his own face. He doesn’t find it funny either, but Alfred needs to laugh at something every now and then. Nothing nowadays seems very funny anymore—it’s all tainted, a drop of ink leeching out across a white surface.</p><p>“That’s not funny,” Matthew says, voicing what he knows they’re both thinking. “What’s with you? You never just give up. On anything.”</p><p>Alfred unfolds the newspaper with a performative flourish, rolls his shoulders, trying to look nonchalant. “I don’t see why you care so much. You don’t even know who it is.” And then, cruelly, acidly, Alfred says, “It’s got nothing to do with you.”</p><p>Matthew’s lips thin into an unhappy line.</p><p>“Maybe not,” he says, and his hands on the table tighten into fists so hard that the veins stand out a mottled blue. “But I know you, and I know when something’s up. And you’re really, <i>really</i> bad at hiding it.”</p><p>Horror and curiosity have Alfred’s stomach doing back flips. Does Matthew know?—but how could he—but he was suspicious of that in the first place, wasn’t he, by the sound of him when Alfred said <i>young</i> all those weeks ago. It might as well be another lifetime: the tinny tired tone of Matt’s voice over the phone, Alfred’s mouth bitter from drip coffee kept warm too long and his fledgling lie.</p><p>“Well, Matt, I’m fine. Just stressed with work.” Alfred sighs, a long-suffering one like he’s done with this, bored with this, even though his heart races at an animal pace. “You’re imagining it.”</p><p>“No.” Matthew studies him studying the paper. “I’m not, Al. What is it?”</p><p>Alfred says nothing.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>New year rolls over him and Matthew, and they celebrate in an atmosphere of uneasy détente. Next semester looms, at once to Alfred’s relief—to be free from his brother’s scrutiny—and to his dismay, because while it has never been entirely absent, the intensity of Alfred’s feelings had abated. Out of sight, out of mind. Alfred can’t help but think he’s only delaying the inevitable. (What that <i>inevitable</i> might be, Alfred does not linger on. He does not let himself.)<p>Alfred packs up his new-old games and his new-old console and promises not to play too much on weeknights. Matthew just shakes his head.</p><p>“Call me when you get there, okay?”</p><p>He touches Alfred’s arm, then, and his hand holds there for a moment too long. An attempt to convey something that he won’t say and that Alfred doesn’t want to decipher.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says and grins, guileless. “Don’t I always?”</p><p>It’s not so much a question as it is a statement, but Matthew smiles wanly and nods, anyway. “Yeah, you do.”</p><p>Their goodbye after that is oddly stilted, an unbearable distance despite the warmth of Matthew’s hug as they stand at the threshold of the door. His cab idles noisily behind them. It’s Alfred’s fault, this all is, but he can’t think how to fix it.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Back in the States, back in his own car, Alfred looks out at the long, grey road stretching on towards a grey sky. It seems to say <i>remember, remember, they’re still here, you know</i>. The phantom monolith-memory of the school takes shape in Alfred’s mind..<p>He forgets about Matthew and the weight of his hand on Alfred’s arm. He remembers Arthur, the feel of his hot cheek under his thumb, the easy flow of his pen and their conversation that halted his cursive across the page. But Alfred doesn’t want to—not to forget nor to remember, for neither provide any sanctuary—and so he suppresses the thoughts as best he can, driving too fast as though he could outrun them. </p><p>The familiar silhouette of campus peels into view. The buildings look greyer still in the halflight of a January morning. Taller, too, a monumental impossibility on the skyline.</p><p>Alfred feels, strangely so, like a kid arriving for his first day of school.</p><p>(Nervous energy. That’s all.)</p><p>He pulls to a stop, the steering wheel creaking under the tightness of his grip. Alfred should call Matthew and tell him he’s arrived safely, but he can’t hold his cell with his hands shaking as badly as they are. Cursing under his breath, Alfred shoves his phone back in his coat pocket. He’ll do it later, yeah, when the cruddy post-flight feeling has been slept away.</p><p>The car door swings open wide and Alfred steps out, road salt crunching underfoot. He can taste storm static in the air, thunderheads casting their dark shadow.</p><p>The first week is going to be hell.<br/>
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Then again, the first week always is.

</p><p>No one wants to work, not even the students that are typically keen. After fourteen days solid of lie-ins and laziness, Alfred can sympathise. At least he’s getting paid to do this. Alfred repeats this to himself when his patience begins to wane—with the work, with his students—and all he wants to do is lower his head on to his folded arms and sleep on his desk. It’s hard, sure, but bearable, and Alfred knows that within a few days the rhythm of it will become familiar again.</p><p>By the time Friday comes, Alfred is nearly back into the swing of things. He might be through seven cups of coffee already today, but that’s because it’s necessary. He’ll ease up once his body settles back into its routine. When it’s time for Arthur’s personal tutoring, Alfred’s on to his tenth cup (the last cup, he promises his jangling nerves), holding it in both hands so the heat leeches into his blood.</p><p>Arthur arrives at his desk without needing to be encouraged or even reminded; nor does he wait for permission to slide a chair up to Alfred’s side and sit down. He used to hesitate. Alfred likes that he doesn’t anymore. There’s a trust in that, isn’t there? There’s got to be something to it.</p><p>Alfred notices the broad stretch of Arthur’s smile.</p><p>“Have a good Christmas?” Alfred asks, the mere look of Arthur enough to lift his spirits. It eclipses Matt’s unhappy frown in his memory. “Did you get any worthwhile presents?”</p><p>Arthur’s face lights up at that—so much so that Alfred nearly can’t breathe for a second. God damn it.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, and unexpectedly bashful he lowers his gaze to his lap. “It was great. You don’t realise how much you miss home until you’re back there, I think.”</p><p>Alfred hums, thinking of the cool air of Matthew’s house that had nothing at all to do with the temperature. “I told you, didn’t I? What did you get, then?”</p><p>“Money,” says Arthur, and if possible his grin widens even more, “and my dad promised me a car, once I’m old enough.”</p><p>“A car?” Alfred lets out an impressed whistle that makes Arthur flush. “Wow. I didn’t get my own car till I was… nineteen, I think.”</p><p>“It’s just a promise for now, though. And I bet he’s trying to make up for this,” Arthur says, masking his pleasure with cynicism so thin that Alfred can see straight through it. “You know, for putting me through boarding school.”</p><p>“Words are cheap, huh,” Alfred says, but he can’t stop himself from beaming too. “I just think you don’t want me to be right. Right?”</p><p>Which makes Arthur laugh—low, light, slightly awkward. Different from his usual polite titter. Alfred wants to swallow to sound from his throat.</p><p>It’s almost like those two weeks apart never existed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: actual physical assault in this chapter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alfred doesn’t know when it happened, but when he looks at Arthur, it’s not all about the neat curve of the small of his back anymore, or his accent both cut-glass and boyish, or the way he handles his rollerball pen, the graceful swoop of his tail letters.</p><p>And that’s a little frightening. Because—because it’s more serious now, isn’t it? Now that it’s not just the desire to fuck Arthur. Now that he likes Arthur for who he is, his sweet shy self in peculiar parallel with his vulgar mouth.</p><p>He likes it when Arthur folds his arms over his chest and rants about English and American spellings, the petty difference between two countries so similar. When Arthur enthuses about the latest thing he’s reading, typically some literary fiction Alfred would never care about but gets swept up in all the same, because Arthur has that kind of power. How maths—not math—is one of the most frustrating subjects in the school curriculum and <i>how can you stand to teach it, sir?</i></p><p>Alfred wants so much more, more than he ever has before, but now he has so much more to lose.</p><p>(It’s just a matter of how-what-when.)<br/>
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</div><br/>“Aries?”<p>The classroom is where—where else—white winter sun streaming through the window like god’s fingers. Arthur isn’t working, not since the pair of them fell into casual conversation, so Alfred doesn’t bother either. He rests his empty coffee cup on the cover of the closed textbook.</p><p>“Pardon?”</p><p>Alfred waves a hand, leaning back so hard in his chair that it creaks. “Your star sign. I bet you’re an Aries.”</p><p>He’s trying to pass this off with subtlety, but Alfred has never been the subtle kind.</p><p>“Uh. No?”</p><p>Alfred adopts a put-upon frown. “Oh man, normally I’m pretty good at guessing!”</p><p>Arthur’s voice bubbles with amusement, “I didn’t think you would be into that sort of thing, sir.”</p><p>“I am a multifaceted man,” Alfred says. He rubs his temple with two fingers. “Am I close, at least?”</p><p>Alfred is a better actor. He knows he’s close. Alfred <i>knows</i>, and Arthur doesn’t know that he knows, and which of those is worse?</p><p>“Yes, actually,” Arthur admits.</p><p>Alfred stretches, squints like he’s channelling some innate power. “Gotta be a Taurus.”</p><p>A short silence, Arthur’s brow furrowing even as his smile lingers on his face.</p><p>“… Mhm, you got it.”</p><p>Alfred fist-pumps like it’s some great victory, then resettles in his seat. Arthur’s worksheets on transformations jump, half-forgotten on the desk, the tidy pile disturbed by Alfred’s excitement.</p><p>Arthur rolls his pen between his hands, watching it rise and dip between his fingers, the flesh of his palm. “Not bad,” he concedes, his eyes not on Alfred but on the pen still. He smirks. “How about my weight next?”</p><p>It’s a joke—a good one—and Alfred knows it is, but it doesn’t stop his heart from leaping into his throat, from the thoughts saying <i>if that isn’t flirting what is</i> and <i>you’re reading too much into it</i> and <i>shell his shirt from his chest and find out, why don’t you.</i></p><p>He laughs a little too hard, a little too long.<br/>
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</div><br/>It’s been, what, half a year? since they first—well, Alfred wants to say <i>met</i>, but it wasn’t so much that as <i>watched</i>. Still, it’s been a while, and Alfred thinks his self-restraint is other-worldly for lasting this long when he’s been so haunted by these feelings. And he wants it to last a little longer—or, no, he wants this all to go away completely, to not need such self-restraint—but he knows it’s won’t, somehow. Somewhere, deep down in his wretched soul, where this started, lurking at the bottom of his stomach as a little coiled ball of <i>hey, new kid</i> and grew from there.<p>Six long months. Alfred thinks he’s seen it all, or at least most of Arthur, besides the parts he wants to see the most. But then Arthur had smiled, and his left cheek had dimpled. How strange to see new things in someone he’s studied so carefully. Is this what it’s meant to be like, to be in love with someone? To find such mundane, inane things so novel.</p><p>The smile had been triggered by an elaborate gesture Alfred had made while enthusing about vectors and scalars, a flourish that knocked his glasses clear off his face. They had frozen, staring at each other in mutual surprise until Alfred had to ask Arthur to look for them.</p><p>(“Are you really that blind?” Arthur had blurted out.</p><p>“Rude!” Alfred had said, an incredulous laugh at the back of his throat. “And yes, I am.”</p><p>It turned out he’d knocked them just beneath his desk. Arthur had handled his frames so delicately—thumb and forefinger holding the frames by the left hinge as he passed them into Alfred’s outstretched hand. And, putting them on, Alfred had seen it then—his gentle dimpled smile, more tender than any he’d seen on Arthur’s face before. It filled him with traitorous hope.)</p><p>But they’re working on transformations again, and this time they are actually working rather than talking-while-pretending-to-work. The tip of Arthur’s tongue sticks out in sheer concentration, one hand reaching for his ruler from time to time, a pen in the other, the satisfying scratch when he scores a line of reflection across cheap graph paper. Over and over, congruent shapes mirroring each other.</p><p>Alfred aches with the same ache that burns holes in him at night, dreaming of similar scenarios that always end in a very different fashion. On his side of the desk, Alfred’s been pretending to work, too—marking pop quizzes and that day’s homework, and admin papers past their due-date—but all he’s really doing is watching Arthur, which is almost all that he does nowadays, noting each little thing. It’s practically a one-man game: how much can he memorise in a glance, never so long as to catch Arthur’s attention?</p><p>Hitchhiker’s thumbs; a scar on his middle knuckle, a risen white crescent; the nail of his little finger bitten ragged-short but the others neatly clipped. The swift, smooth loop as he writes out numbers, letters, symbols, shapes; the rhythm Arthur falls into when the rules start to make sense, when he understands, and that too fills Alfred with an almost possessive pride.</p><p>Arthur has piano fingers. Or guitar fingers, maybe, because they are almost too long for his hands, and calloused at the first knuckle. The pad of his index finger is stained, barely, where the ink has split into the whorl of his fingertip from the funny way he holds his pen, so near to the nib.</p><p>His legs fold beneath the seat because these chairs are so low, even though Arthur’s not exactly tall anyway. And he’s kind of slumped over, because the desk is pretty low too—Alfred only uses it briefly during class, doing most of his paperwork in his office which is furnished far more ergonomically—so Arthur’s chin is almost touching the paper he writes on. The skin of his face is smooth, still; he probably does not need to shave. The thought is disturbing enough on its own, and so much worse because it does not repel Alfred. Rather, it makes him want to touch Arthur’s cheek to find out. He wants to touch, to <i>learn</i> all of him, beneath the pristine neatness of his uniform.</p><p>And then Alfred doesn’t know what he’s doing—no fucking clue—but his fingers twitch even in the tight fists he’s made, and he can see the curve of Arthur’s thigh from here. How badly he wants to trace the fine, grey seam. It’s easy to imagine his reaction, Arthur’s hand freezing in the middle of an equation, or the middle of a number, even, a throaty murmur of surprise.</p><p>
 He shouldn’t be doing this. He isn’t doing this.
</p><p>
 Alfred dares not think, dares not breathe, allowing his hand to move of its own accord. From his own lap to hover over Arthur’s. He doesn’t notice, absorbed in his work, mouthing the numbers in silence.
</p><p>
 Carefully, Alfred lowers his hand. As though it hurts to hold aloft in the air above Arthur’s upper thigh.
</p><p>
 Arthur jumps, the motion of his pen hitching, his head snapping upright. And in the same fraction of a moment, he looks down.
</p><p>
 He sucks in a hoarse breath.
</p><p>
 “Sir?” he squeaks, and Alfred has no idea what to say, if he can even speak. <i>Should I move my hand higher still or up and away.</i>
</p><p>
 “Arthur,” he breathes, instead, and feels the ready heat of Arthur’s flesh beneath his palm, through the fabric of his pants. Just that: “Arthur.”
</p><p>
 What else can he say. Slip of the—sorry—didn’t meant to—but it’s all such an obvious lie, the deliberate weight of his touch so heavy it might as well be a millstone, and his hand is just sitting there, pressing into Arthur’s thigh.
</p><p>
 Arthur’s eyes, when Alfred can bear to look at them, are wide and dark and water-clear with something else. The clarity of understanding, and fear of that understanding. Alfred wishes he had the guts to remove himself, to jump out of his chair and run.
</p><p>
 Arthur swallows audibly.
</p><p>
 “Mr. Jones,” he says, and his voice is odd, uncertain, lost. His nails skitter—the pen forgotten by now—nervous across the desk, the bitten ones and the unbitten ones. “I, I don’t…”
</p><p>
 Alfred jerks back to reality as though this is just another dream, as though he might wake up in a cold sweat in the safety of his bedroom any minute now. Alfred hasn’t been lucid since this all began, when the thoughts began to burrow deeper and deeper still until they had rooted to his very spine. He lets go of Arthur’s thigh—rather, he jolts back so hard and fast that his chair screeches and he almost cracks his head against the wall.
</p><p>
 Arthur stays perfectly still, his hands unmoving now.
</p><p>
 “Sorry,” Alfred says, fumbling for the door because he can’t stand to look at him anymore. “I'm sorry.”
</p><p>
 The corridor screams in off-white.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Alfred spends the weekend as best he can, holing himself up in his campus apartment and playing on the SNES till his eyes hurt, chip music replacing any rational thought. When he sleeps—out of exhaustion than any real urge to—he does so with the covers drawn over his head, and his dreams are out-of-focus, senseless. He hardly remembers them the morning after.<p>Which is good.</p><p>He wakes up sticky-eyed and still tired; showers in cold water and eats sugary cereal with extra sugar dissolved in the milk until his teeth ache in his mouth. He brushes them so hard that his gums bleed and he spits pinkish foam into the sink. The blood wicks away under the faucet’s stream.</p><p>And then he marks the work he was supposed to mark two days ago, or three, or maybe even a week—he can’t remember anymore, not when he’s narrowed down his existence to every fifth period Friday—and the numbers merge into one another and make little sense. Alfred gives every piece of homework a <i>B</i>.</p><p>Which isn’t good.</p><p>So he sighs, and turns back to his videogames, Matt’s videogames, for another four hours until dinner, and he never takes those recommended hourly breaks because, really, who does? Alfred cooks hamburgers from frozen and eats two, protein-style (he has no bread and he isn’t going out to get some) and saves the other two for tomorrow.</p><p>Dinner is not so distracting as an RPG. As he eats, Alfred can’t help but think of Arthur’s thighs, the gap between them that’s narrow enough to slip a hand between but nothing more. He thinks of Arthur and his grades that have been rising-rising-rising, and how good it made them both feel, such a simple and tidy thing like a natural exponential function.</p><p>Alfred grinds his molars until the meat turns into a bland paste in his mouth.</p><p>He should call Matthew.</p><p>(He does, and the phone rings off, its shrill cry reminding him of a dying animal.)<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s their first lesson after what happened and before anything, everything else. Arthur is almost normal, and Alfred tries to follow his example.<p>“Homework for next week is page seventy-two, odd questions only please.” Alfred sips from his coffee and smiles. “Remember, if you have any problems, come talk to me!”</p><p>The class rumbles to life as they pack up, the familiar rattle of pencils and pens being put away into their cases, the release of the week’s tension manifesting in easy laughter. Alfred always likes the end of the day, the chatter, the easiness of it, classroom camaraderie. Alfred likes the noise. The company. The noise that comes with company.</p><p>(Alfred is trying to distract himself, because Arthur is supposed to spend another hour with him, like last week, like always, and Alfred wonders if he will—if Alfred should let him. But of course, Alfred wants Arthur more than he does not.)</p><p>Again, Arthur does that thing where he sticks to Francis like glue, talking to him in a quick whisper, never so loud as to be heard over the sound of the others. Alfred hates it just as much now as he did the first few times, because they’re cutting into his extra session—those precious minutes spent listening, watching—and Alfred can’t stand much more.</p><p>Five minutes. Ten. The classroom is practically empty.</p><p>They’re talking about—him, it must be him and his wandering hand, his wandering eye, you sick creepy fuck sir—Alfred doesn’t know until he hears, brash and loudly French, <i>la cuisine anglaise</i> and a derisive snort. Arthur flushes hotly and punches Francis in his upper arm.</p><p>Alfred glances at the clock. Fifteen minutes, now.</p><p>Enough, he thinks, as Francis bursts into peals of charming laughter and Arthur rankles, so red he’s practically sizzling.</p><p>“Kirkland,” Alfred says, harsh enough to startle them. He gives a pointed look to his wrist and a more pointed double-tap to the face of his watch there. “We’ve got work to do.”</p><p>Arthur’s eyes go wide, then low, dropping to his feet before they flick over to Francis. Francis, meanwhile, watches Alfred quietly.</p><p>So Alfred shrugs, and smiles—for the boy’s benefit—and goes about his preparation: blank graph paper, coloured pens and pencils, calculator. His textbook that’s ratty at the corners, and heavy with the weight of reams of illegible notes and make-shift bookmarks, and fantasies filled out on post-it notes because his mind is so full it overflows. Alfred sits back in his chair. He flips to a random page of his textbook and pretends to lose himself in an equation.</p><p>Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Arthur lean up and grab Francis by the lapel of his blazer. He goes willingly, Arthur’s mouth close to his ear to whisper something in it.</p><p>Alfred bristles without meaning to, his hands tightening with the book still in his grasp. It crumples abruptly in the silence, which prompts Arthur and Francis to turn and face him.</p><p>“Whoops. Slipped, sorry,” he says apologetically, holding his hands up in surrender. </p><p>If Alfred cared to look, which he doesn’t, he would see that Arthur is still frowning, that Francis still has that strange look about him. Instead he pretends to be too busy glaring into the bottom of his cup to notice. Francis gives a subtle nod, barely a twitch of his head, before he slinks through the door with liquidlike grace.</p><p>Alfred’s nerves twist.</p><p>He doesn’t hear footsteps echo down the hallway, even as the door clicks shut behind him. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Just past the threshold Alfred can see Francis waiting through the little window, one hand in his pocket and his phone in the other, rattling away into the receiver. Antonio or Gilbert, he wonders.</p><p>Alfred stands, pushing the chair out from beneath him. He can feel Arthur’s gaze on his back. He can even feel in the way the air stirs that Arthur wants to speak, the force of his breath forewarning—what, an objection? an explanation?—but Alfred yanks the door open before he has the chance to.</p><p>“You can leave,” Alfred says almost as though it’s merely a suggestion, airy, friendly. Francis looks up at him, phone slack in his hand.</p><p>“Ah, but Arthur—”</p><p>“—is having a lesson, thank you, and we don’t need extra distractions.” Alfred does not touch him, but he moves a little further into Francis’ space. Just to make his point. Francis takes a slow step back, slow enough that for a moment Alfred thinks he’ll meet resistance.</p><p>But then Francis shrugs, a languid rolling of the shoulders that seems to pass all the way down to his ankles, cat-like in its smoothness.</p><p>“Alright,” says Francis, calm but tight with obvious suspicion. He cranes around Alfred’s side to peer at Arthur through the open door. “<i>Au revoir</i>.”</p><p>Behind them, Arthur mumbles something, his goodbye, probably, and Francis swivels on his heels. Alfred stares after him, leaning his shoulder against the door frame, till his glossy black Italian lace-ups turn the corner.</p><p>Here it comes—deep breaths—shallow breaths—Alfred turns to see Arthur staring at the ground, his hands flexing in his pockets. Alfred shuts the door. It’s so quiet that the click of the latch could be a gunshot.</p><p>“Did you ask him to…” Alfred pauses, walking over, bracing the heels of his palms against his desk, “… to wait for you?”</p><p>Arthur remains frozen at his own seat, though after a long moment he nods. Alfred exhales a weary sigh.</p><p>“Righty, then,” he says, flipping the book over and holding it open. “Try these questions for today.”</p><p>Arthur does as he’s told, settling at the front of the room, obedient and silent now. His attention is focused entirely on the textbook. Watching him, Alfred thinks, <i>I have two choices</i>.</p><p>They could pretend it never happened. It would be simple, easy: Alfred would not mention it, and he’s certain that Arthur never would either.</p><p>Could be it’s too late for that. Could be that Arthur told Francis, and now Francis knows. He can’t forget the look on Francis’ face, his grey-blue eyes glittering with some unknown, unknowable light.</p><p>But then, Arthur has never struck him as the type to spill things so easily. Him and Francis are friends, that much is obvious—but few teenage boys are willing to make themselves vulnerable, not even to their own family. Alfred’s been there, and sometimes he remembers just how lucky he is to have Matt to talk to about everything. Almost everything.</p><p>The sun is low in the sky and it casts odd shadows across the room. Arthur’s writing is slower today, though he’s so focused on holding his head down that Alfred can allow himself to stare unashamedly, openly, hungrily. His eyes trace the line of Arthur’s bare forearm, his sleeve folded up out of the way, the tapering thinness of his wrist, the veins there and in the hollow of his elbow. Bluegreen beneath white skin.</p><p>Another part of his mind unfurls itself from some dark corner. It says, <i>you could open him up, learn him, teach him. you’ve taught him so much already.</i></p><p>That option he likes the least and the most.</p><p>Alfred thinks of spreading Arthur open, like his textbook, pinning him there across his desk and reading out loud the secrets written beneath his skin. Alfred thinks, and thinks, and thinks. For the hour’s painful passing, neither him nor Arthur speak. Not about math, nor about Alfred’s hand on Arthur’s thigh that day. To call it a rejection is too kind; it implies an invitation, a confession, an overture. What Alfred did was practically assault.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Alfred can’t bring himself to remove the qualifier, though it’s not as though he ever speaks it out loud. <i>Practically</i> assault. <i>Basically</i> assault. Because assault is such a horrible word, for such a horrible thing, and Alfred isn’t—he’s not a bad person. He’s—he is—<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
The problem is and always has been with Alfred. His insatiability, his greediness. Not just a sweet tooth so much as a mouthful of them. <i>You’re so spoilt</i>, Matt had spat at him, age fifteen, when Alfred’s driving lessons were prioritised over his.</p><p>He’s not used to rejection. Alfred is handsome, and clever, and disarming: an all-American boy without the quarterback ego. The last time Alfred had been rejected had been in elementary school, a pretty pigtailed girl who refused his offer to play house. It’s only natural that the idea of it is nearly unbearable to him. People have always liked Alfred. </p><p>Alone in his bathroom, he pulls at the flesh of his face.</p><p>“I’m not ugly,” Alfred tells the mirror, hardly seeing his own reflection. “I’m really not.”</p><p>Because he isn’t, is he? To this day Alfred attracts looks in the street—men and women both. He had so many girlfriends in high school, barely ever a week between the last break-up and his new date. His friends used to call him a heartbreaker—more joking than serious, but still—though Alfred felt that he was too open, too eager-to-please, most happy when he was making other people happy. And unfortunately his teenage self did not distinguish between liking and <i>like-liking</i>.</p><p>Maybe Arthur has that problem. Too young to know his own mind.</p><p>It would be understandable. Alfred after all is so much older, so much more experienced, and that alone would put the fear of god in most fourteen-year-olds. Arthur may not even be gay—something that Alfred has spent almost no time considering because he had not deemed it important in the first place, not in the unreal fantasies he dreamt up.</p><p>Surely teenage hormones will make allowances.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>It’s been two weeks since it happened. In Friday’s final class, his students memorise and utilise formulae and everyone acts so bored of it that even Alfred is affected. He hears the waning enthusiasm in his own voice, at which he finally gives in, assigning each row a separate set of questions to peer-mark afterwards. A classic teacher’s tactic when you just <i>can’t</i> anymore.<p>There’s homework he should be checking anyway, and as the class descends into silent work he throws himself at that instead. Lately Arthur has been doing very well—eighty, eighty-five percent correct these days. Alfred likes to think it’s his doing. It fills him with secret pleasure, hot, content, soothing his rattled nerves. It satisfies the hole in his gut that hollows him.</p><p><i>Not enough</i>, his mind supplies unbidden, and Alfred forces it back beneath his red pen, an answer book he doesn’t need, and ten unmarked assignments that need to be done by the end of the hour.</p><p>This time, after class, Arthur does not waste any time. Francis leaves with his usual swagger, pausing only to yank Arthur’s shirt collar from behind as he walks past. Inchoate jealousy overwhelms all logical thought; Alfred has to swallow back a seething breath. Francis, who can touch Arthur with impunity, who <i>does</i> touch Arthur with impunity, so frequently that he could almost be showing off.</p><p>The spell is broken by the door clicking shut behind. Alfred’s rage relents immediately, and he’s scared by the suddenness of it, both coming and going, so often now his emotions like a rip tide he can’t control.</p><p>Arthur unpacks what he needs mutely on to Alfred’s desk. His chest hurts. And his gut, the aching hole that’s there, all of it eating at him—old dreams and new ones and <i>Arthur’s hands thighs frown.</i></p><p>Alfred is so sad that for a moment he can’t breathe. He wants so badly that he can’t think. It’s so much easier to surrender if he doesn’t, his mind slipping quiet beneath roaring hunger. Touching without thinking, the naturalness, the ease of it. </p><p>God, he can’t stand himself. Remember when it was look but don’t touch? When it was talk but don’t pry?</p><p>(Pry is the wrong word. It triggers in Alfred’s mind Arthur apart beneath him, pliant, an open and broken thing.)</p><p>Arthur glares down at his textbook.</p><p>“Having trouble?” Alfred asks, almost instinctively. He shouldn’t; Arthur jerks like he’s been shocked.</p><p>“No,” says Arthur, and he makes a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Next week—the third week since, Alfred’s mind unable to <i>not</i> think about that moment, his hand on Arthur’s thigh—and Arthur says nothing at all. Not even when Alfred asks how he’s doing. Now he simply nods.<p>Alfred is sick and bored and still wanting.</p><p>The uneasy silence is broken by Arthur, hissing through his teeth, pausing in his rote work to flex his fingers. Alfred wants to make a lousy joke, something that would have been so easy back in January and yet is now impossible.</p><p>Alfred wants to open Arthur’s mouth up with his fingers, feeling the hot-slick-slide of his tongue. He wants to hoist him up from his seat by his belt—Arthur’s eyes widening in shock but not horror, arousal fogging his gaze when Alfred touches him. Alfred wants to not want any of this anymore, shame a deadweight on his shoulders. </p><p>There are a lot of things he wants, things he can't have. But then, really, what’s stopping him? Only his own damn self.</p><p>“I like you,” Alfred says without meaning to. “Arthur.”</p><p>Arthur pretends not to hear him, and it’s almost admirable: his gaze fixed on his worksheet, the unfaltering movement of his pen. He definitely heard, though, his fingers tensing almost imperceptibly but for how closely Alfred watches them.</p><p>It’s almost an out-of-body experience. Alfred feels himself stand and close the distance between them, the few short steps to Arthur’s seat. He crouches there.</p><p>“I like you,” he repeats, “a lot.”</p><p>Arthur’s fingers tremble. The ink is wet, smudging when he accidentally drags his palm across it. When Alfred looks closely, he can see Arthur has repeated the same formula five times. Not so unaffected as he’d like to seem, then.</p><p>The pen drops from Arthur’s right hand and rolls away.</p><p>“Excuse me,” says Arthur. He pushes himself upright, hands braced on the desk, but Alfred grabs his skinny wrist to keep him in place. The heat of his skin from his bare forearm, the sleeve folded up to the knob of his elbow. Alfred can feel Arthur’s pulse, frantic, its rhythm almost indistinct.</p><p>“Do you,” swallow, exhale, and whisper, “like me, Arthur?”</p><p>Silence. Their faces are mere inches apart.</p><p>“When a teacher asks you a question, you answer,” Alfred says, as slow as though he were talking to a child. (The child that Arthur is, surely, and this can’t be right—can’t be real, it’s not real, a dream more vivid than the waking world.) </p><p>Arthur purses his lips. They’re white in his bloodless face. He’s bitten them raw, a nervous habit worse now than it was, and Alfred wants to touch the shiny red swell of his bottom lip. He’s sick of pretending not to, and so he lifts his hand to Arthur’s chin. The boy does not move an inch. Alfred lets the pad of his thumb brush the soft, warm skin of his lips, and then further, finding the flat of Arthur’s teeth. They’re warm, the smoothness of enamel strangely tactile. Alfred traces his thumb over his incisors, the prominent ridge of his canines. </p><p>Alfred leans up from his crouch, nearly overbalancing in his eagerness, and inhales. Arthur smells sharply of citrus and teenage boy. The wrongness of this hits Alfred like a train, and for a moment he is so nauseated that he nearly gags. But Arthur—his solid warmth, the mere physical fact of him so close—settles Alfred’s stomach. He closes in to kiss the corner of his mouth. And, oh, Arthur <i>lets</i> him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: explicit sexual assault in this chapter between an adult teacher and underage student, as well as manipulation and blackmail relating to recreational drug use.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It all happens too fast after that. Pulling Arthur up with him, towards him—buttons scraping his shirt with little scratches of whispers of noise—kissing the other corner of his mouth, and then kissing him proper, feeling Arthur’s breath hiss between his teeth.</p><p>The sound makes him pause. Arthur pulls away, only slightly, as if he thinks Alfred won’t let him. He looks scared. Eyes wild, throat bobbing.</p><p>“Sir,” Arthur says, and the air between them almost seems to shiver. “Mr. Jones.”</p><p>Alfred can’t decide which of those names he likes more. <i>Sir</i> does have a nice ring to it, and not many students call him that besides Arthur; most call him <i>Mr. Jones</i>, friendlier, more familiar. Arthur only ever called him that when he was in a good mood, his rough edges smoothed by Alfred’s offering of mint humbugs and bad jokes. It’s strange to hear it now, in this context, Arthur’s uncertain voice so far removed from his usual playful manner. But then, Alfred would probably like anything Arthur calls him on principle. No matter what, when, or how.</p><p>“Yep,” says Alfred, one hand tilting Arthur’s jaw and the other fisting the front of his shirt, mooring him as sure as an anchor. “I’m listening.”</p><p>Alfred is a good listener, isn’t he? Hasn’t he provided a shoulder for Arthur to cry on for weeks on end? He’s a decent guy. It’s just this one little thing, a slip on a record otherwise unmarked. Like the ink on Arthur’s cheek, the scar on his knuckle, the slight frown creasing his forehead that Alfred always resisted smoothing away when their answers didn’t match up.</p><p>The tightening of Alfred’s grip is reactive rather than deliberate, though it jars Arthur out of his shocked pliancy. He goes suddenly rigid. So unlike the many girls Alfred has been with, their sighs softening as he’d kissed them, stroked them—high school girlfriends, college flings, then Bella until they grew tired of each other. Arthur is so different from them, innately, infinitely so. In comparison he is unearthly.</p><p>“Relax, Arthur,” Alfred says, and lifts Arthur’s shirt enough out of the way that he can touch naked skin. “Take a deep breath, yeah?”</p><p>Arthur doesn’t; keeps them short and shallow and harsh, his eyes squeezed shut, his nostrils flaring—and Alfred wonders if that’s supposed to be a rebellion. He likes that, mostly because there’s something so inherently <i>Arthur</i> about it. Stubborn as a mule, and so proud even like this. Alfred laughs before he can stop himself, the fingers of his right hand splayed across Arthur’s hip, the sharp crest of bone there. Just as he had dreamt it. Better, maybe. The heat of Arthur’s flesh could almost brand him, so real and so strange after months of self-restraint. The muscles of Arthur’s abdomen jump when Alfred’s nails scrape <i>up.</i></p><p>It seems to trigger something within him.</p><p>“Fuck—,” Arthur shouts, loud and sudden enough that Alfred does flinch back, “—<i>off</i>, get the hell off me!”</p><p>Arthur’s chair clatters to the floor as he yanks himself free, though in his panic he stumbles over its jutting legs. There’s a strangled cry of pain as his shin scrapes against one, and it’s enough to make Arthur stop in his panic. The distance between them is still so short, feet rather than mere inches. It would be easy to reach for him, Alfred thinks, imagining his hand closing tight around Arthur’s skinny bicep.</p><p>Arthur does not run like Alfred half expects him to. It’s a stalemate, the room descending into perfect stillness: Arthur watching him, Alfred watching Arthur. The boy’s chest heaves, his breathing neither deep nor even enough to find a steady rhythm.</p><p>Alfred makes himself relax. His head is throbbing, and something else—second heartbeat under his stomach—is alive and pressing.</p><p>“Arthur,” Alfred says, silkily, sweetly, reaching again for Arthur’s arm. He’s surprised that Arthur lets him, frozen by whatever it is he sees in Alfred’s face. “You never did answer my question.”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
He has Arthur open on the desk, pulling him up by the seat of his pants and spreading him out like the textbook, like his homework, like clothes freshly laundered to be put away. The clean cotton smell of him, and beneath it the organic scent of skin and sweat. When Alfred kisses him a third time, slowly, tenderly, close-mouthed still, Arthur bites his lip. A little warning, that’s all. It hardly even hurts.</p><p>“Sorry,” Alfred says, so close that their lips touch when he speaks. “Is it too much?”</p><p>Arthur hisses, and Alfred wants to—<i>can</i>—take the sneer off his face, this time. So he does, kissing him with adult hunger, a deep probing kiss that knocks their teeth together, and as much as Alfred hates himself for it, Arthur does not bite again.</p><p>Alfred has been thinking of this for too long. Weeks, months now, ever since he let the fantasies shift and grow, a fruit left on the vine too long. Alfred made them real by touching Arthur’s thigh, some invisible barrier dissolving with that trespass and leaving before Alfred an open expanse. What chance was there of resistance when the opportunity finally presented itself? </p><p>It should be scary, the amount of thought he’s put into this. Though Alfred has always been more scared of the desire itself. These… <i>things</i>, the ideas that come with it, are mere drops in the bucket. </p><p>“My brother’s a bit of a pothead,” Alfred says, conversational once he pulls back, smelling in Arthur’s hair rain and tea so strongly that he can almost taste them. “He always saves me some from his stash.”</p><p>Arthur meets his gaze even as his eyes slit narrow.</p><p>“The thing is, I’m not a huge fan, you know? I don’t even really like drinking, to be honest,” he says, and some part of him can’t bear that he’s using Matt like this, for this, even as most of him can’t seem to care. In this moment, Matthew is no more real than the Arthur of Alfred’s dreams was. “I’ve got some back home that I’ve never touched. Hell, I’ve still got all the brownies he’s baked with it.”</p><p>He hears Arthur swallow around the lump in his throat. He looks Alfred up and down, his silence saying so loudly that he knows what’s coming, but then he’s always been such a smart boy. Just not at math. Perhaps, if he were, they would not be here right now. Perhaps, if he were, Alfred would simply see him once a week for an hour and do nothing more than look at him. How much easier it would have been. How much lonelier.</p><p>“It would be such a shame if they found some under your bed,” Alfred goes on, fingering the knot (Windsor knot, naturally) of Arthur’s tie between forefinger and thumb. The fabric is slippery, easily loosened. “Or even in your bag. Your scholarship is such a valuable thing, but pretty tenuous, too. People think schools like this are so generous, but really they just want the best students to boost their own ranking.”</p><p>Arthur’s swallow, this time, is more laboured, an audible <i>gulp</i> like something out of a cartoon. Wile E. Coyote watching the anvil overhead. </p><p>“They’re so quick to drop a student, especially a sponsored one. I’ve seen it, you know? And he was expelled just for sneaking cigarettes into his dorm room.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t,” Arthur tells him, but his eyes give him away, water-clear, honest to a fault: the dawning awareness that maybe Alfred would. “Sir. You wouldn’t, please.”</p><p>His voice fades to a hoarse whisper. It’s obvious even as Arthur says the words that he doesn’t believe them, and finally he yields, his hands relaxing their grip on Alfred’s wrists. He hadn’t even noticed Arthur holding them. It’s a surrender that Alfred doesn’t need; he already knows that he’s won. </p><p>(A hollow victory, one he doesn’t want. Not like this. Arthur’s face drained of all its colour, all its life, blank empty sadness taking their place.)</p><p>Of course Arthur can’t know Alfred’s mind, desperation warring with sick relief, nor the terrible fear that’s sat and fermented there for months in tandem with his arousal. It does bring Alfred some comfort, though, to know that Arthur won’t say anything. It’s almost like he’s saying <i>okay, I like you too.</i></p><p>What they need is time. Alfred’s done this once already, working away at Arthur’s carapace until it broke beneath the force of his kindness. Hadn’t Alfred tried so hard? Not just to resist his fantasies but to be a friend to Arthur at the same time; to treat him without condescension, without guile.</p><p>This is just Alfred being his most honest self. Splitting open his sternum to show his black and rotten heart, but one that beats nevertheless. It’s better, isn’t it, this way. It must be better.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
It’s hard not to rush. Alfred is sweating under his polyester slacks and white shirt and tie, improperly knotted unlike Arthur’s own. He’s lifted Arthur back on to the edge of his desk and there he stays, unmoving, as Alfred searches out the key in the left-hand drawer.</p><p>It takes him a frantic minute to find it. After all, he rarely has reason to lock up the classroom; Alfred can’t remember the last time he did outside his first year of teaching, when newbie anxiety made him meticulous and he would lock up every weekend. Now he doesn’t bother even over summer break. </p><p>He misses the keyhole the first time, metal scraping metal, his high and hysterical <i>oops</i> surprising even Alfred himself. Then the lock clicks as he slides the key into place. Arthur flinches twice, the muscles in his jaw jumping at every minute sound.</p><p>Alfred swallows. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. It’s more like he’s breathing syrup than air, a claggy, clinging lump in his throat. “Sorry. It’s just—we wouldn’t want anyone walking in, would we?”</p><p>He hears it in his own words, the careful complicity as though Arthur would agree. </p><p>Arthur does not disagree. He simply looks at Alfred, his eyes wet, glassy, unseeing.</p><p>(He wants to say <i>don’t cry don’t don’t don’t</i> and bring Arthur’s head to his chest and cradle him close. Alfred doesn’t know anymore what he wants, because now when he’s actually getting what he wants it’s not right—it’s not right at all and fuck, he’s all wrong and what if Arthur cries and what about Arthur’s family and what about—what about—)</p><p>Alfred walks over to Arthur, so much smaller now with how he’s bent over himself.</p><p>“Shh,” he says, though Arthur is perfectly silent all on his own.</p><p>How easy it would be to stop. Move back, unlock the door, walk away. Like stripping off his flesh, skin fat muscle and all and stepping out of himself, leaving only pure perfect nothingness.</p><p>It is easier to continue. No object can resist its own inertia. Alfred pushes a hand under the waistband of Arthur’s pants, first tracing the buckle of his belt before lifting the notch free. He feels a shiver run through Arthur, a live current transmitting from skin-to-skin.</p><p>He doesn’t make any noise. Arthur only breathes, not great gulping breaths anymore but easier, more naturally now—he’s stopped fighting. <i>Acceptance</i> is a much kinder interpretation than <i>resignation</i>, and so that’s what Alfred tells himself: we want this. we want this. we want this…<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
It only begins to feel truly real when Alfred’s hands find bare skin, the repeated pattern of his dreams so familiar that the actual experience gives him déjà vu. He removes Arthur’s shirt, freeing each button from its buttonhole before slipping it back over his shoulders. Arthur is ragdoll limp and lets him, his face turned outward, away.</p><p>Yes, it goes just as Alfred had imagined it. The satisfying slither of Arthur’s belt as it slides through the beltloops of his waistband. Alfred drops it in a snaking coil on the desk. Gently, he takes each of Arthur’s ankles in turn, untying the double slip knots before levering off his shoes and setting them on the floor. And then he’s tugging Arthur’s pants down, and his boxers follow—black, sensible, Arthur through and through.</p><p>He dare not check Arthur’s face, but looking down he can see that he’s gripping the desk. White-knuckled, his nails digging into the wood grain hard enough that it must hurt. When he glances upwards, Arthur's head is no longer turned away. His burning stare startles Alfred this close. Still, Arthur is blushing, and when Alfred meets his gaze some of its fire dissipates. His murmur is below Alfred’s hearing, and anyway he does not want to listen. There’s room for little else with the memory of his dreams filling Alfred to the brim.</p><p>“How’s this?” he asks instead, tugging at Arthur’s cock with little pulls. Arthur’s breathing hitches—tripped up staccato <i>ah</i>s, almost more pain than pleasure—and Alfred steals them away with his mouth. It must feel good, because though he starts soft soon Arthur is getting hard with Alfred’s insistent attention, his chest heaving, his mouth open, every inch of him radiating heat.</p><p>The sight makes Alfred’s own groin throb. One hand still on Arthur, he grinds his palm against his clothed erection. Impatient, ungraceful, his nails scrabble for his belt and then his fly, and Alfred squeezes himself through his underwear. He makes a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh, utter broken relief, a starving man finally fed.</p><p>Maybe he’s sick in the head—there’s no <i>maybe</i>, he definitely is—but Alfred’s been wondering what kind of noises Arthur makes. Loud or quiet? You wouldn’t know by his personality, the contradiction of his sweet shyness when praised set against his brash and dirty mouth among his friends. It used to make Alfred a little jealous. Arthur would almost always censor himself when talking with him. Strange how the word <i>fuck</i> could be an expression of intimacy. </p><p>Maybe Arthur is the type to swear out of pleasure, too. Or perhaps he’s quieter, all trembling breath and bitten tongue? Though when Alfred twists his hand around Arthur’s cock, it startles a gasping moan out of him. It’s so lovely, not at all what Alfred had imagined and lovelier for how unexpected it is. He tucks the sound away into a safe corner of his mind, but then it’d be impossible for him to forget.</p><p>Alfred groans, mouthing at Arthur’s neck. He feels Arthur stiffen at the sensation of his tongue and teeth there, sinew under skin under shifting bone.</p><p>“I want you,” Alfred says, with deep and desperate honesty. He sucks at the hollow of Arthur’s throat, though he’s careful to leave a mark where it can be hidden. “You have no idea just how much I’ve wanted you.”</p><p>It might as well be a confession. Alfred cuts himself off, disturbed at the sound of his own voice. His touches are growing frenzied now, palming himself through the fabric of his boxers as he strokes Arthur, a clumsy mismatched rhythm. Arthur is frantic, too, hot and flush and pressed against him, his earlier reluctance giving way to a sweeter kind of surrender. Alfred doesn’t want it to be over and he does, all at once. He can’t breathe like he used to, his heart surging into his throat, lights spotting his vision, pleasure knotting deep and dark in his gut.</p><p>A shuddering wave rolls through Arthur. Building, building as Alfred touches him, until his noises pitch and the desk grates against the floor, and he folds in on himself like he’s been struck in the stomach. Arthur comes first.<br/>
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<br/>
<br/>
Alfred waits, feeling tender to the grey matter, unmoored by the strength of his orgasm. He’s hot and uncomfortable, wedged against the desk with Arthur cradled in the crook of his thighs. The air is stuffy around them and Alfred sucks it in greedily, the musk of sex and stale sunlight.</p><p>Arthur’s chest is bare—ribs visible, stomach trembling. There’s come on the inside of his thighs and on the edge of the desk. It narrowly missed some paperwork. Alfred’s fist is wet with it. He places his hand flat to the hollow of Arthur’s abdomen, and the sight of his slick tan fingers there makes his cock twitch.</p><p>He almost wants to take a picture.</p><p>Arthur lets out a hiccuping sob. High, and more tender than the ache settling behind Alfred’s eyelids. Winter leaves the room dark.<br/>
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<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Tissues in the bottom-most drawer. Rarely used, but Alfred remembers still one student who burst into floods of tears during a one-on-one chat about his dwindling grades. Alfred hadn’t had anything to offer him except for the scratchy napkins that came with his cafeteria coffee, and that had felt worse than having nothing at all. Ever since Alfred has tried to be prepared.<p>Prepared. The word makes Alfred feel a little ill. He reaches for the box of tissues, and when he crouches the ache in his legs from standing awkwardly for so long spikes up his spine.</p><p>(He has his cell in his left pocket; Alfred can feel it, pressing into his thigh. The temptation to take it out and <i>click</i> is almost unbearable, and it sickens him even as he thinks it, and really he can’t take the risk of physical evidence—and then, he thinks, <i>when did this turn so clinical and so awful</i> and his despair is so extreme it could crush him.</p><p>Somehow, though, he still wants to take a picture. Little things, so many exquisite details he had never considered: the way Arthur’s hair is plastered to his forehead and the lowlight off the bones of his wrist and the shallow sheen across his stomach. Alfred doesn’t want to forget. Not that it’s likely he could, anyhow, an imprint seared into the cortical folds of his brain.)</p><p>“Hup,” says Alfred, lifting Arthur’s thighs to better clean them. “There we go.”</p><p>He snatches another couple of tissues and swipes them over the edge of his desk, his own stomach, his hands. He doesn’t trust his aim right now, and so he walks over to the trash. Among the usual detritus—pencil shavings, crumpled paper, snack wrappers—the tissues look benign, meaningless. The sad remnants of a seasonal cold.</p><p>The air of the room is still, silent. It would be impossible not to hear the break in Arthur’s breathing, even this far apart.</p><p>Alfred does up his fly and belt before he returns to his desk. Arthur’s head is lowered in such a way that Alfred can’t see his face, not really.</p><p>“Lift your hips. Please.” Alfred wonders how he sounds to Arthur. Cold, practical, cruel? It’s like Alfred is not just outside his body but outside of the room, watching through the window, unable to see or hear himself.</p><p>When Arthur does not move, Alfred lifts him anyway and pulls his pants and his boxers together back up to his waist. His nails skim Arthur’s hipbones, and again the urge comes—to dig into them and leave little marks like promises, threats. Blackmail, since it seems Alfred is not above that either.</p><p>As he moves to do up his zipper, Arthur’s hand knocks his out of the way. Not deliberately, more an accident in his fumbling rush to get there first, tucking himself away, snatching at his belt before Alfred can pass it to him. His eyes, once he lifts his head and Alfred can see them, are dark and dull. Alfred knows he should ache, but again that out-of-body sensation comes to him. </p><p>He feels almost nothing at all. </p><p>No. Not nothing, Alfred thinks, and chases the emptiness away by redoubling his focus on the boy before him. Arthur’s naked torso, gooseflesh raised on his arms, the fine hair just below his navel. The novelty has yet to wear off. It’s soothing, almost, his roaring need now simmering pleasure, and distraction enough from the sense of hollow loss that nearly guts him.</p><p>It’s only when he’s halfway through buttoning up Arthur’s shirt—taking his time, because Arthur lets him and he’s thought too long of touching his skin, feeling intimately the rise and fall of Arthur’s chest, knuckles grazing his sternum when he inhales—does he realise Arthur is crying. Silent crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, though his expression offers no emotion whatsoever. </p><p>Alfred halts. The button just beneath Arthur’s shirt collar is small and smooth between his thumb and forefinger. “Oh,” he says, and then reaches for another tissue. “Don’t—hey, don’t cry.”</p><p>He wipes Arthur’s face tenderly, gingerly, unsure as to how he should feel. Guilty, most likely. But even as he tries he can’t seem to, and a new horror claws at his stomach; the idle wondering of when he became so inhuman, so cold.</p><p>Alfred ignores it.</p><p>Moments later, he is smoothing the knot of Arthur’s tie (he can’t manage a full-Windsor with his trembling hands) and fixing his collar straight. As he does so, he spots the purple mark at the base of Arthur’s throat, a dark mottled bruise on bone that rests just below. It’s such a natural thing, so natural it’s almost involuntary, to reach out and touch it. Alfred knows he shouldn’t like it so much, but he can’t help the way it thrills him. Too far gone now to resist such simple pleasure.</p><p>“There,” says Alfred. He brushes Arthur’s shoulders, tucking a tendril of sweat-damp hair back behind his ear. “Isn’t that better.”</p><p>Alfred tries to smile, though Arthur hardly looks at him. Satisfied that they are both presentable, he eases Arthur off the edge of the desk. His socked feet touch the ground. In direct proximity to Alfred’s own feet, so much wider and longer and undeniably adult in his tired brown lace-ups, Arthur seems so small. </p><p>(It makes Alfred want to hold him, the urge more innate than intentional, and how pathetic it is to want to protect this boy when Alfred has done what he has done.)</p><p>He presses his hand to Arthur’s back, feeling the slope of his shoulders, the knobs of his spine. </p><p>(Alfred knows that he is a monster. He can no longer help it. Somebody has switched the two versions of him in his head, his original self supplanted by some changeling creature. Unbidden, he remembers Arthur enthusing about <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> when Alfred had asked what his latest library acquisition was some weeks ago. It’s darkly funny to think of it now, but below that Alfred feels only an acid bitterness: how much better it would be to have an alter ego to blame. Alfred’s two halves, the monster and the man, make up the same single whole.)</p><p>His hand is still there, flat to the space between Arthur’s shoulder blades. He imagines scoring marks into the flesh of his back and then kissing it better, feeling the heat of Arthur’s skin with his mouth.</p><p>It’s a stupid question that Alfred wants to take back as soon as he says it, but still he asks, “Can you walk?” </p><p>Arthur stares at the floor. Together, the two of them in parallel with their heads lowered: Alfred looking at Arthur, Arthur looking at his shoes.</p><p>“Yes,” Arthur says at last, sand-paper hoarse. He clears his throat, and repeats, “Yeah.” </p><p>Spoken with detached certainty, like a student echoing something he knows but does not understand. Alfred lets his hand drop lower to the small of Arthur’s back. It’s warm under his fingertips, though as soon as he registers the touch, Arthur sidesteps away.</p><p>“I’ll take you back to the dorms, then,” Alfred says, letting his arm drop back to his side. “Okay?”</p><p>Arthur refuses initially. Shaking his head, <i>it’s fine, it’s fine, please don’t</i>, chewing his lip freshly raw. The urge is there even now, to lean over, to suck his swollen bottom lip clean, and Alfred knows it would be easy to. </p><p>“Nah,” Alfred says, in his usual easy-breezy manner, as if he hasn’t just got a student off on his desk and then got off on that. “I’ll take you back. It’s getting dark anyway.”</p><p>As though it’s dangerous on campus. The worst you’re likely to come across would be Mr. Braginsky, a near seven-foot mountain of a chemistry teacher, and he likely wouldn’t do anything other than loom at you. Alfred knows—somewhere between his ribs, where the regret has started its writhing—that before Arthur would be laughing with him; he’d be saying, “Oh yeah, because I’ll get mugged on the school grounds,” the image so clear in Alfred’s mind that he can see Arthur’s eyes roll back, his lopsided smile.</p><p>A shudder runs through him. Alfred ignores it as best he can.</p><p>The key is heavy in his pocket. It’s cool to the touch as he reaches for it, sliding smoothly into the lock with his first attempt. Arthur winces at the clicking of the latch, his nerves so apparent that Alfred itches. The noise of it seems to break some spell, knocking Arthur out of his haze and into alertness: within moments he is at the door, his fingers reaching for the handle. Alfred half wants to let him—it would be merciful. The wolf watching its prey flee into the undergrowth. </p><p>“Slow down, there,” Alfred says, almost without thinking. It’s reflexive, his own hand snatching out—though he’s able to stop himself before he grabs Arthur’s wrist. He brushes his knuckles instead, barely, with his fingertips. “I’m coming with you, right.”</p><p>The seconds stretch unnaturally long, but then Arthur’s hand drops back, and his gaze shutters back behind neutral nothingness. He lets Alfred guide him through the door with a hand on his shoulder, the only evidence of his upset the grey cast to his skin even as he breathes, <i>of course, sir</i>.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Alfred doesn’t even know why he’s doing this. Maybe some part of him is afraid that Arthur will run and tell the first person on campus that he sees. It’s not like Alfred wouldn’t deserve it—it would almost be a relief. But Alfred already knows that Arthur won’t tell anyone; it’s written all over his face, in his eyes, permanent ink on permeable paper. Guilt, fear, sorrow, something black and strange and deep despite Arthur’s calm surface.<p>They cross the courtyard to the other building, one of the dorm houses—Arthur’s house—the one that looks like a prison, Alfred always thinks, its blank windows like eye sockets, the brick cobwebbed; long dark streaks run from the window frames, rain bleeding colour from the paintwork. Arthur is shaking as they arrive at the entrance. </p><p>“Relax,” murmurs Alfred near Arthur’s ear, hoping he sounds as gentle as he means to. Their proximity makes heat creep up his neck at remembered closeness—a past hardly twenty minutes ago—and Alfred scratches it away.</p><p>“I can get to my room on my own, sir,” Arthur says, all in one breath. It sounds rehearsed, lacking inflection and emotion, as though he’s been practicing it in his head beforehand. </p><p>A sick little thrill goes through Alfred, almost like schadenfreude, that he knows where Arthur’s room is. What would Arthur think if he knew that Alfred had known for months, long before Arthur even understood what polynomials were? </p><p>“You’re in the same room as Bonnefoy, aren’t you?” asks Alfred, smoothly, as if he isn’t telling Arthur <i>I know where you live</i>. “Third on the left, right?”</p><p>Arthur’s breath catches. Alfred hears it turn into something awful in his throat, a stumbling cry, but when he looks Arthur is staring mutely at the ground. It’s not that Alfred enjoys this, this <i>power</i>, but it feels necessary. To safeguard them both, what they are. What they have become.</p><p>(<i>What you have become</i>, his brain suggests, never quiet, never calm, a wailing siren.)</p><p>Third door from the left as you come up the stairs, room two-six, looming in dark oak. Arthur walks like he’s going to the gallows, in absolute silence, his hand shaking at his sides. There’s an awkward overlong pause as he searches first through his pockets, and then, dropping his bag from his shoulder to his feet, searches there too. </p><p>“My key,” he says, very quietly as if he doesn’t want Alfred to hear. He remains in a crouch, his forehead nearly touching the door’s surface. “I… I must have dropped it.”</p><p>Alfred feels a sympathetic pang. “It’s okay. Back in—” his mind stutters, restarts, “—in the classroom?”</p><p>The memory seems to shock Arthur into action. He unfolds himself so abruptly that Alfred steps back, and before he can say anything more Arthur knocks on the door.</p><p>A short few seconds pass. Then Francis answers, his voice passing through the door before he opens it.</p><p>“Oh, Arthur, did you forget your key again? I…” Francis trails off, spotting Alfred past Arthur’s shoulder. He frowns in that graceful way of his, barely so, his gaze flicking between them. There’s no missing the way he lingers on Arthur’s face, which from here Alfred can’t see. To Francis’ credit, when he continues his voice is steady, warm, as if Alfred is a welcome guest rather than a visiting teacher. “’Allo, Mr. Jones.”</p><p>Alfred grins. An image of himself coalesces in his mind, a good, concerned teacher watching out for his student, even as the memory of Arthur’s flushed face warms his blood. “Artie wasn’t feeling too great, so I brought him over.” He tries not to be too obvious, letting his eyes pass over Francis and into the room. He wonders which one is Arthur’s bed. “Just in case, you know?”</p><p>Francis’ nod is a little slow to come. </p><p>“Of course,” he says, and he steps back to allow Arthur past the threshold. “Just in case.”</p><p>“Oh, and Arthur,” Alfred says, “don’t forget what I said, okay? Take care of yourself.”</p><p>Arthur doesn’t turn back, his head dropping in what could be an acknowledgement. Francis watches him, and as Alfred watches him watch he swears he can see cogs turning, curiosity showing in the minuscule crease between his eyebrows. Trust Francis to make even confusion look chic. Then, his eyes flash as they catch Alfred’s—not necessarily understanding, but seeing something in Alfred’s unguarded expression for that fraction of a second that makes his frown deepen.</p><p>Shit. “See ya, Francis!” Alfred chirps, brightening as best he can. His smile feels more rictus-like the longer the moment lasts. </p><p>Relief rushes through him as Francis shrugs. He mutters his goodbye and closes the door.</p><p>Alfred walks away from it, away from them, wincing as the fluorescent lights wink off his glasses. It makes this ugly place look even uglier.</p><p><i>What a joke</i>, Alfred thinks. His heart thuds, not fast but heavy, a deadweight punching against his diaphragm.<br/>
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  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>In his apartment, Alfred throws his jacket, his shoes, and his bag in a heap just inside the door. The hallway smells stale, of last night’s dinner and standing water. Alfred’s skin itches, everything suddenly irritating, his collar too tight, his hair too long, his glasses pressing hard into the tender flesh of his nose and above his ears. He paces a hole in the floor for ten minutes before collapsing on to the couch. His watch, a vintage Casio he’s nursed along since he was thirteen, spots green across the ceiling. Alfred hadn’t bothered to turn the light on when he came in. <i>17:55</i> blinks at him from his wrist; with his head on his arms Alfred can’t ignore it, and the blocky neon burns his eyes up close. He tears at the strap and throws it clear across the room.<p>The watch makes a satisfying rattling smash as it hits the wall. Alfred can’t bring himself to care.</p><p>He needs to talk to Matthew.</p><p>His cell, at his hip. Alfred grabs for it, and feels again that overwhelming, inexplicable rage, the vicious urge to launch it against the wall. A child’s destructive fit of temper. Before he can, Alfred jabs through his recent contacts. He wedges the phone against his temple and tries not to burst at the seams.</p><p>Ring and ring and ring. The screen feels hot against his face, hot as flesh.</p><p>Just as Alfred can’t stand the sound anymore, a voice breaks through.</p><p>“<i>Hey</i>—”</p><p>“Matt!”</p><p>“<i>This is Matthew—</i>not <i>Alfred—Jones, and I’m afraid I’m busy right now. Please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.</i>”</p><p>“Fuck,” Alfred says, just as the beep sounds. “Uh, hey. Mattie. I think I need to talk to you. Get back to me whenever. Thanks. It’s, it’s not an emergency, or… look, just call me back if you can. Um, love you.”</p><p>(Alfred wakes up later, half-hard—the remnants of a dream which is no longer just a dream anymore—curled in on himself on the sofa, the room dark, the ringing of his phone a drill piercing his skull. It’s Matthew, at half ten at night, the worry so apparent in his voice that Alfred hurts all over. He asks <i>what’s wrong</i>, and Alfred can’t think of what to say, or how to say it, and so he tells him it doesn’t matter and lets the conversation dwindle to death, every word like ash in his mouth.)</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When you realise you’ve probably made the biggest mistake of your life—the biggest mistake one stupid man could possibly make—time tends to drag a little.</p><p>It’s seven in the morning. The sun casts its watery light across the living room; Alfred hadn’t the energy last night to move to his bed. He was afraid to. His phone sits on the ground next to the leg of the coffee table. Alfred turned it off and slid it across the floor after Matt’s call, afraid it might ring. He didn’t even know anymore what or who he was so scared of. The principal, the police, Matt again, Arthur somehow. </p><p>He sleeps fitfully on the couch, still in his work clothes. In the brief, almost feverish periods of waking between, Alfred’s senses narrow down to the cage of his physical self: eyes stinging and his mouth foul, sweating through his shirt and shivering with cold.</p><p>The light shifts, growing harsh and then soft again as the afternoon leeches away. It paints the walls pink, blue, black. When Alfred finally rises to look out the window, he can see the moon glowing fat and cratered and yellow. Alfred covers it with the pad of his thumb.</p><p>He should be making dinner. Or marking work, or writing out his class reports. </p><p>Alfred claws at his hair instead. </p><p>“Damn,” he says, folding one arm over his chest, other hand wedged against his chin. It’s too mild for what this is, so he tries, “Fuck,” and feels none better.</p><p>At least he has the weekend to pull himself together. At least he has two days to <i>not think</i>. Though it’s more like one day, now. He picks up his phone and his watch, unbroken, though the backlight flickers as if in reproach.</p><p>(Alfred’s good at not thinking, at least outside of numbers. Matthew was always the thoughtful one, considerate to a fault, his personality wearing away beneath a constant surrendering to someone else—their tastes, their preferences, their choices.)</p><p>But still Alfred thinks and wants and dreams. Sleepless in the dark, shadowed gold by a fat, cratered, yellow moon.<br/>
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</div><br/>Something fundamental has broken. Alfred thinks of a mechanism, cog teeth never meeting, a failed trigger, the abortive <i>click-click-clicking</i> of metal on metal.<p>(Where’s the—what’s he supposed to—sick, he’s going to be sick—)</p><p>“Matt?” It’s the fifth time the phone has rung, the third time it’s his brother, and first that Alfred bothers picking up since Friday night. “Hey, what’s up?”</p><p>“Al,” Matthew says, his voice so thick with concern that he sounds minutes away from crying. “Talk to me. Are you okay?”</p><p>It’s not a good time. Alfred should have answered before now—so much more suspect to leave his phone unanswered, and he hadn’t even bothered to listen to Matt’s messages—but he has a lesson in fifteen minutes, and then a staff meeting that should last thirty and won’t after that. He is not yet dressed, his bag half-packed; he’s been awake since five, catching up on the work he had ignored over the weekend.</p><p>Alfred yawns. “We talked, like, a couple of nights ago,” Alfred says, clipping a new watch around his wrist. His Casio gave up on Monday, first the backlight failing completely and then the numbers, dissolving into abstract lines. He catches his skin as he notches the clasp, holding the phone still. “Ow—not that much can happen in three days, Matt.”</p><p>“It’s been five days,” Matthew says. Then, after a loaded pause, “Alfred.”</p><p>The deployment of his full name freezes Alfred in his tracks, tie slung around his neck; stars and stripes, red and blue loud against his white shirt. He’d bought it at a thrift store, and Matthew had done what he always did when faced with Alfred’s taste, arching an eyebrow in amused judgement.</p><p>It was one of Alfred’s favourites. </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>His brother sighs. A long, uneven exhale, as though he really is about to burst into tears. “Alfred. You know I’m here, right?”</p><p>Shouldering the phone to his ear, Alfred returns his focus to his tie. Loop together, apart, and through. Dad taught him this, once… he must’ve only been nine years old, one of his aunts on his mother’s side getting married. Him and Matt had been wrestled into matching suits. If he closes his eyes, he can see them side-by-side in a framed picture on the mantel of their parents’ house: twin ties, twin glasses, even their hair parted to match.</p><p>“Of course you’re there, bro. Where else would you be?”</p><p>Another sigh.</p><p>“That’s not what I meant, you—” Matthew stops again, making a frustrated noise as he barely manages to hold himself back. “You’ve been acting all weird since… well, I don’t know. You just are.” A beat, and his voice comes softer this time, “I’m worried about you, Al.”</p><p>“Don’t be,” Alfred tells him, trying to sound assured, chipper, “I’m not being weird, I’m fine. Just stressed ‘cause of work, but apart from that I’m hunky-dory.”</p><p>The words sound true to himself. Yes, old Alfred would definitely say some cheesy crap like <i>hunky-dory</i>. How bitter it tastes in his mouth. Alfred glimpses his new watch face and swears.</p><p>“Matt, I gotta go. Class.”</p><p>In the second before Alfred hangs up, he catches the beginning of Matthew’s protest, a word teetering on the brink of a yell. Then silence as Alfred shuts him off. He expects (deserves) whatever angry voice mails and texts he’ll get, but he’s never been late before and he’s not going to start now.</p><p>His tie, knotted half-Windsor, looks pretty sharp in the reflection of the blank screen of his cell phone.<br/>
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Matthew leaves no angry texts nor voice messages. Alfred’s phone is disconcertingly quiet that morning, afternoon, and evening. He watches it the way a rat watches food in a trap, wary on the approach. He should be relieved that it doesn’t ring once. Finally Matt’s got the clue that even if Alfred isn’t <i>hunky-dory</i>, he’s not willing to talk about it.</p><p>(That night, Alfred presses his face into his pillow and grits his teeth, trying not to sob even as his body shakes. That juvenile rage returns as scalding as before—worse now, actually—and he wishes Matt were here so he could scream at him, punch him, collapse against him like they’re fighting five year olds again when they made up as quickly as they fell out. <i>How dare he</i>, Alfred thinks, chewing chunks out of his cheek, his nailbeds, <i>I need you, Matt, please, how dare you leave me, please please please help me.</i>)<br/>
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</div><br/>Two days pass. Friday afternoon. Alfred spends every movement break between classes in his office, swiping sweat from his forehead, pacing like an animal. By the time fifth period arrives, he’s basically vibrating out of his skin.<p>Then—there’s no Arthur.</p><p>Alfred has to look over the classroom twice, as though he’s gone so blind that he could mistake a filled chair for an empty one. His gaze lands on Francis, who despite the lack of Arthur’s presence is his usual irritating self. He’s turned his attention to the boy to his left, talking in his easy manner, prodding and teasing. Alfred watches and wonders.</p><p>Arthur could be late.</p><p>Arthur could be sick.</p><p>Arthur—</p><p>Could be many things. </p><p>Alfred fidgets in his seat as the students settle themselves. The movement period is over, five minutes past the hour. Alfred fingers the torn corner of his four-year-old textbook, thinking absently that he needs a new one. And that he should start the class. </p><p>Arthur is usually early. By now even the chronically late students have arrived, ducking their heads as though Alfred will not see them if they make themselves a couple inches shorter. If Francis is here and Arthur is not, something is up. Since Alfred has yet to command their attention, the general noise of his students continues, and under the cover of their conversation he calls out to Francis. </p><p>“Hey, Francis!” He smiles and, half-manic, waves him over. “C’mere a sec.”</p><p>The boy to his left—dark hair, glasses—relaxes at Francis’ distracted attention.</p><p>“Yes?” Francis says, approaching the desk. His head tilts to one side, cat-like as ever, his eyes lit with amusement at Alfred's enthusiastic gesturing. </p><p>“Isn’t Artie coming in today?” Alfred asks. The nickname is deliberately chosen: look how close we are, how buddy-buddy. Yet he has to busy his trembling hands by doodling near-perfect circles. “Is he sick?”</p><p>Francis observes him, such a scrutinising look on a teenage face. Then he nods.</p><p>“Yes. He hasn’t been feeling well since last Friday, I think. When you took him back to our dorm.”</p><p>Alfred taps the end of his pen to his temple. “Poor kid. Has he gone to the nurse’s office?”</p><p>Francis’ right eyebrow twitches.</p><p>“I’ve offered to get the nurse for him, if he will not go to the office. But he… does not want me to.” His expression turns sour. “It’s odd, no?”</p><p>The pen feels slippery between his fingers. Slowly Alfred brings his hands together on his desk in a desperate clasp, almost prayer-like. He hums, non-committal, trying to appear merely thoughtful.</p><p>“Might just be a winter thing—I always catch stuff around this time of year,” Alfred says, the geniality easy to play off, like stepping into a pair of familiar shoes. It takes Francis a while for his frown to smooth away, and in its place a vague smile quirks his mouth as if he isn’t really listening.</p><p>(Or as if he doesn’t really believe him.)</p><p>“Ah, perhaps,” he says, and waves an elegant hand. “I’m sure he’ll be okay soon. You know how Arthur is.”</p><p><i>Too well</i>, Alfred thinks, and icy disgust pools in his stomach. Waving Francis back to his seat, he says, “Okay, thanks! Give him my best, yeah?”<br/>
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Over the next week, Alfred sees Arthur on fleeting occasions; from his office window, passing in the corridor, a flash of him in the assembly hall. He looks—okay, Alfred thinks, but Arthur strikes him as the type who is pretty good at hiding things. If only Alfred was likewise so subtle. Trapped in his own skin his emotions feel so obvious that they might as well be written on huge letters on the wall behind him. Fear, frustration, grief. Hunger.

</p>
<p>Friday is slow—slow to come, slow to pass—Alfred blames the cold weather, each hour fermenting in the ineffective sun. Eventually it’s lunch hour, then a crawling fourth period, and, at last, fifth.</p><p>Alfred has a mug of hot chocolate rather than coffee, made with proper cocoa. He needs it.</p><p>(No Arthur.)</p><p>Francis, all long limbs and proud head and un-teenage grace, slides into the room with four people in tow. Alfred admires his ability to catch a crowd. Alfred used to be able to do that, once.</p><p>He almost says nothing. But then Francis walks by and irritation knots all his nerves together. It’s practically a reflex: “Francis!” he calls out, and the boy stops in his tracks. Alfred waves him over and Francis, one eyebrow artfully arched, obeys.</p><p>“Monsieur?” he says. He’s got one hand holding his satchel—dark brown leather, Italian, naturally—and the other slung low in his pocket. Like some fucking catalogue model. “Can I help you?”</p><p>Alfred makes a show of looking around the room, lifting his gaze over and around Francis’ head. </p><p>“Is Arthur still not well?” he asks, voice lowered to a discreet whisper. “I thought I saw him around the other day, is all.”</p><p>Francis casts his eyes to the side. He says, “Ah… he <i>was</i> fine, but he didn’t feel well this morning. It seemed like it would be better that he took a break, even if only for today. He works very hard, our Arthur.”</p><p><i>Our Arthur</i>. Whatever is simmering in Alfred’s stomach surges to a rolling boil. He holds his pencil a little too hard. “Oh, yeah. I know! Good kid. He’s never let me down.”</p><p>Francis releases a melodramatic sigh, tossing his hair back off his face. “He still will not go to the nurse. He is stubborn as well, no? He makes himself worse, I swear.”</p><p>(The way he says Arthur’s name makes Alfred feel like a spitting viper. So overtly, overly familiar, an ingratiating friendliness. Francis strikes him as someone that likes to like almost everyone and is not afraid to show it.)</p><p>“Sounds like him,” Alfred says, nodding. He smiles and holds up crossed fingers. “Here’s hoping he’s better by next week! Sucks to waste your weekends sick.”</p><p>Francis hums, a long, low, considering sound, and removes his free hand from his pocket to fix his tie. He cants one shoulder, a non-shrug. “Yes, let’s hope.”</p><p>Alfred stares into his mug as he hears Francis walk away. Its familiar sweet-bitter smell does not soothe his unease like he’d hoped it would.<br/>
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<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> _______________</p>
</div><br/>Third week. Twenty-one days.<p>Twenty-one days since he’s seen Arthur—almost a month now, five hundred and sixteen hours <i>thirtythousandninehundredandsixty</i> minutes—but that’s not right, strictly speaking, because he has seen Arthur. Brief seconds, flashes of recognition. Little catches of green that don’t catch him back.</p><p>(And so they can’t count.)</p><p>Okay, okay, but he’s sweating like a nervous wreck even in the cool weather. Someone remarks on his lack of a jacket early one morning—student, teacher, Alfred can’t even remember—and he realised then that he’d hardly noticed anything outside his own head. It was miraculous he managed to dress at all, these days. Muscle memory guided him through his routine: sleep, eat, teach, repeat.</p><p>He has his last lesson of the last day of the week and Alfred’s in a state so desperate that it’s killing him. Terror and desire so acute in his chest that he can’t disentangle them. The hour of Arthur’s class passes, and then another afterwards—or is it half, or two hours, or is his mind so distorted that he can no longer tell the time? Alfred glances at the clock and struggles to read it.</p><p>One of those. things.</p><p>Arthur could just be sick again.<br/>
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He’s pulling on his jacket, only because he’s got a few free hours from now to lights out, when club activities finish for the week and the dorms slip into still silent darkness. What else would he do with this time besides fret? All Alfred is doing is checking; checking if Arthur is still sick, because he cares, doesn’t he. And because he just happens to know where Arthur’s dorm is.</p><p>The school grounds are expansive, but Alfred has a large stride. As he walks across campus he hears the usual noise, boys playing soccer and field hockey, the resonant <i>crack</i> of a baseball bat, referee whistles, laughter and shouting in equal measure, at equal volume. It fades as Alfred turns the corner of Arthur’s building. It stops altogether when he walks inside. Alfred turns down the longest corridor he’s ever seen, and though it can’t be that old it feels ancient. Cobwebs list lazily in the ambient air, hanging from the lights, a notice board, the ornate cornice of the ceiling.</p><p>Alfred hates old things. Dust catches in his nose and throat.</p><p>Heel-toe turn for the hundredth time in five minutes and when he moves Alfred feels every single joint grind against each other like they don’t quite fit anymore. Maybe they don’t. Not after—after whatever.</p><p>(Arthur has rearranged his very DNA, not just messing up his mind but so much more than that.  Sea change. Skin too small for his rippling flesh, bones in brittle disorder; an ulna where his femur should be, the column of his spine twisted like a double braid rope.)</p><p>The dorms. Alfred’s here, standing in a hallway that could stretch for a paint-chipped century, rooms set in neat rows either side of the corridor. Third from the left.</p><p>Alfred raps four times, then three, almost like a song. He hums the rhythm back to himself. Checking his watch. There’s time, still, plenty of time.</p><p>Footsteps beyond the door, and then there’s a muttering that sounds like:</p><p>“Francis, I told you I was fine already—”</p><p>The door swings open with a <i>shff</i> against the tired blue carpet. </p><p>Arthur falls abruptly silent. He blinks and appears to reboot, the flash of horrified recognition bright in his wide eyes.</p><p>“Oh. Oh, Mr. Jones. Um.” He looks at him, and then away. His mouth works but no sound comes out.</p><p>Alfred takes pity, beaming hard enough for the both of them. “Arthur! Haven’t seen you in a while, huh?”</p><p>He slides one foot through the door, feeling through his shoe the metal ridge of the threshold. Just in case. Leaning his shoulder against the frame, just in case. </p><p>“You’re still not feeling great?” Alfred asks, and he lets himself absorb Arthur, in the flesh, in front of him after so long. He’s wearing a t-shirt that’s too big and gone white-grey, over-washed to threadbare softness. Arthur plucks at the bottom of it, loose fibres dangling like spider legs. </p><p>(Alfred can’t help but imagine him in <i>his</i> clothes: Alfred’s sweaters, Alfred’s shirts, his bomber jacket huge on him, hanging off Arthur’s shoulders and past his hips, reaching mid-thigh, the collar dipped low enough to show the bone of his sternum. Alfred’s insides crawl and feel impossibly warm, molten gold rising in him until it swallows the space around his heart and chokes it off.)</p><p>Arthur shakes his head. He checks behind himself—at the empty room—and then more subtly past Alfred, into the empty corridor. Whatever it makes him feel, however, he manages behind neutral good manners: he rolls his shoulders and breathes, his face relaxing out of its grimace. </p><p>“Not really,” he says. One little tell as he catches his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’m sorry, sir.”</p><p>Alfred lifts one hand, placating. “Oh, no, don’t be!” he says, and pushes forward just an inch so he can stand tall in the doorway. “Could we have a talk, though?”</p><p>Arthur’s hand, still on the edge of the door itself, clenches. The panic is obvious in Arthur’s eyes, even as he maintains the even blankness of his expression. Now Alfred recognises the desperate searching for an excuse—just like all those months ago when he first offered their extra sessions, Arthur's reticence so much more innocent then.</p><p>“Ten minutes, tops,” says Alfred, and smiles, and he can see Arthur’s fingers steady their shaking as he makes his hands into fists, letting go and stepping back, nodding, saying <i>sure</i> like he’s going to cry because it’s so cracked and quiet. The door opens easily under the weight of Alfred’s hand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW: graphic sexual assault in this chapter, including digital penetration.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alfred’s insides clench and unclench. There’s something inherently intimate about this. Arthur’s room, his living space, where he sleeps and eats and laughs. Among other things. </p><p>(There’s Francis, too. And someone else. But they’re not here right now, and frankly Alfred can barely recall their faces when Arthur is here, the solid physical fact of him in the middle of this room that smells of Earl Grey and pear drops.)</p><p>There’s a mug perched on the table in the middle of the room, and behind it a pile of books. Elaborate, impressive looking books—hardbacks, red and black leather, their spines printed with gold lettering. Classics, most likely; a brief glance lets Alfred catch at least two <i>Dickens</i>. Arthur stands there, beside them, behind them. He swallows hard and shifts his weight from foot to foot. </p><p>“Sir,” he says, prompting, even as his head dips down to his collar. Alfred imagines his thumb and forefinger beneath his chin, tilting his face upright.</p><p>He walks over, easily sidestepping the coffee table. There’s a faint stain on the patterned rug, not far from where Arthur has perched his mug. It’s so domestic, so ordinary—Arthur must always sit there, and perhaps one evening distracted by his book he spilled his tea, or perhaps Francis’ wandering hands knocked it over. </p><p>It’s easy to make his imagined scene reality, and so he does. Fitting two fingers under Arthur’s jaw, tipping his face upwards to meet his gaze. Arthur follows his gentle provocation.</p><p>Alfred smiles. He nods gently, speaks gently. “You’ve missed a lot of work, y’know?” he says, and drops his hand back. Arthur’s head stays where it is; he does not look away from Alfred’s eyes. “You have some catching up to do. No big deal, though. I’m sure you can handle it, right? You’ve improved so much already.”</p><p>Arthur doesn’t nod, but some new light fills his eyes. Alfred likes it, very much. </p><p>“Mm. Good,” he says. An odd nervousness comes over him and his hands, useless at his sides, go to toy at the hem of his jacket. The button is loud under the tapping of his thumbnail. “I’ve got some of the stuff with me if you’d like to get started. I’ve got—” flick to his watch and back up, “—an hour or so. I’m happy to help!”</p><p>Arthur does not look especially pleased at the suggestion. His face drops for the second time.</p><p>“Come on, now,” says Alfred, grinning, lifting his briefcase on to the table. He’s careful not to disturb the books, the mug. “Chin up.”<br/>
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They work for thirty minutes, Alfred thinks, though it may be less. Time drags. Under the coffee table, he can see Arthur’s toes curled tightly. Alfred is almost surprised that he goes barefoot, half expecting argyle socks. They’re a little long and very white, like his fingers, and well-kept. Clean. The fussiness of it is more surprising, but then perhaps Francis has rubbed off on him.</p><p>(Alfred wonders so much. Nowadays, he’s always thinking, a twisting corridor he can’t help but turn down. He wishes his mind would go quiet these days. It used to be so easy. Now not even the most mindless daytime TV can shut his brain up.)</p><p>There’s the dry noise of shifting paper, eventually, finally, as Arthur finishes the last question and sets down his pen. Alfred leans in a little too close, checking it over his shoulder. Arthur is completely still.</p><p>“Well done,” Alfred says. He pats Arthur on the back, injecting his voice with warm enthusiasm. “Perfect, in fact!”</p><p>Whether it’s the proximity, Alfred’s touch, or his effusive praise, Arthur flushes. He shrugs him off.</p><p>“… What else, what else?” Alfred asks himself, sifting through the piles of sheets, and books, and even old letters that have snuck into his case. “There’s some more work here, but I’m not sure if you’ll get it because of what you’ve missed. Unless you’ve been borrowing Francis’ notes.”</p><p>Arthur does not look at the new work laid before him, nor at Alfred. His eyes stare, unseeing, through the floor. Alfred considers him.</p><p>“Don’t wanna work, huh?” he says, and Arthur continues to bore holes into the floorboards. It feels deliberate, determined. “Well, we don’t have to.”</p><p>Arthur doesn’t seem to like this alternative, either. But it’s enough to get his attention, and his stare lifts to Alfred: his chest, his hands, his legs crammed under the table from the low seat, anywhere but at Alfred’s face. Even as Arthur’s gaze moves upwards, he lingers on Alfred’s clavicle, his throat. Alfred feels a lump form where his eyes rest. </p><p>Biting his lip, Alfred chokes on his own breathing. “Hey. Say something?” he tries, because he hates the silence more than anything. “Please?”</p><p>Arthur switches his focus again to the floor under his bare feet. He traces a seam in the wood grain with his little toe, up to the frayed edge of the rug.</p><p>“Okay,” he whispers, and his arms curl around his sides, hugging himself. Alfred wonders if he’s falling apart too, just like he is.</p><p>It seems to be all that Arthur can find the strength to say. They sit in silence. Alfred clicks his briefcase open, shut, open, shut, in the vain hope the silence will break itself. The brass clasp smears under his sweating fingertips. </p><p>Alfred wants to leave so badly, and yet he doesn’t. He feels himself stand anyway.</p><p>He’s thinking that his feet will take him to the door, but then his hand is on Arthur’s shoulder, squeezing tighter than is appropriate, and it’s an awful thing to behold: Arthur’s shaking bones, his resolute stare to the ground, and the <i>krrch</i> of his pen as it rolls halfway across the table like a dropped marble.</p><p>“Stand up,” Alfred says, hoarsely. He pulls him upright by his t-shirt, the excess fabric making it easy. Arthur lets him.</p><p>The top of his head doesn’t quite reach Alfred’s shoulder. Short for his age, though Alfred has seen how boys shoot up at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. For now, though, he can’t be any taller than five foot four. Fourteen years old, nearly fifteen. He’s so young, and so fragile that Alfred can feel the comparative smallness of his bones under the expanse of his palm.</p><p>“It’s cold,” Alfred says, finally, and even that truth sticks in his throat. “Isn’t it.”</p><p>It’s a question that Arthur won’t answer.</p><p>(In his head, Alfred sees himself letting go and saying sorry, dissolving under the weight of it all. But although everything is so surreal, so unreal, he can’t wake up.)</p><p>He can feel Arthur’s breath through his shirt this close, and it’s <i>warm warm warm.</i></p><p>Another part of him still thinks, <i>Arthur needs me.</i> And he does, because he was failing—he would’ve failed, and then he would have lost his scholarship anyway—and Alfred helps him with so much, more than just his math, and as a teacher—</p><p>(—as a professional, how many conduct seminars has he been to, and how many headlines has he seen, even in printed text the disgust so palpable it could make you nauseous, the seedy teacher and the slip of a student, or students, an epidemic of abuse—rightly loathed, the revulsion but also the head-shaking disbelief of the teachers’ lounge. <i>God, just how could someone… I can’t understand it… so young, when they look so young…</i> and Alfred smack in the middle of it all.)</p><p>Arthur’s breathing is still shallow, and hot, and so very, very real.</p><p>“Your birthday,” Alfred calls out, the suddenness of it making Arthur start. “It’s in a month. In April.”</p><p>Arthur looks at the wall past Alfred’s head. “… Taurus.”</p><p>That’s enough.<br/>
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Alfred is sick and cold, and he knows this down to the bones. </p><p>(His gut is louder, though, and ten times as persistent, and it roars while the theatre of his mind plays out its many scenes.)</p><p>So he lets his grip get a little tighter, and he brings Arthur a little closer. His breath could scald his skin even through the starched cotton of his shirt. Alfred lets it and loves it—remembering a dream of Arthur’s soft sigh on the naked skin of Alfred’s bare shoulder, as he held him in his lap and fucked him just like that. There’s no way he can explain it, not out loud. It’s not like Arthur would understand anyway. The problem being that he’s so young, and Alfred, well, he isn’t <i>old</i>, so to speak, but older. </p><p>Arthur is only fourteen.</p><p>Fourteen going on forty, was what Alfred had said once, and Arthur had laughed—his self-deprecation easy and comfortable. The sanctity of a shared joke. It had transcended the years that separated them, and how natural it had felt, like meeting with an old friend after so long. Arthur had said in reply, <i>being cynical does not endear that many people</i> and the remembered intimacy of his voice makes Alfred ache. Arthur’s rare affection and honesty in the shadowed warmth of a Friday evening.</p><p>Alfred can’t have that, not anymore. A sacrifice he willingly made, but a sacrifice nonetheless. Instead, he kisses Arthur’s temple, twice, in the same sun-wet spot. When he inhales, Arthur’s corn silk hair tickles his nose. </p><p>“Oh, Arthur,” he says, filled with unbearable tenderness. He feels his face crumple. Arthur seems to shrink with him.</p><p>(<i>You’ve ruined me</i>, is what he’s thinking. But he dare not say it.)</p><p>He kisses Arthur anyway, properly, on the mouth. His lips are cold and chapped, and he tastes like spearmint toothpaste and burnt toast and butter. </p><p>His hands drop to Arthur’s—clutching the hem of his own shirt and tight-hot at the knuckles—and Alfred holds his forearms, feeling the hairs rise in answer to his touch. He has something like thirty-four scant minutes, and his watch is giving little blinks, and the sun is glinting off the corner guard of his briefcase. The room is cold, but Arthur is warm.</p><p>He thinks he says <i>sorry</i> at one point, but Alfred can’t really remember. </p><p>At least he’s made his decision. So much better than standing in the middle of the room, the empty space between them like some unfathomable, terrible chasm, blacker than black, Alfred’s shame burning holes in him. The silence had been so heavy. Now Alfred’s breathing breaks it up into fractions. He pulls Arthur towards and into him, his nose pressing against Alfred’s left breast pocket. Alfred can’t think enough to peel him away, and neither does Arthur, so it must be okay.</p><p>His groin aches. He’s half-hard and desperate, and he can’t resist the inevitability of what’s happening—what Alfred wants to happen, that he’s allowing to happen. He cants his hip against Arthur’s leg so he can feel his erection, and from there Alfred lets the unbearable gnawing arousal takes over. Tugging Arthur and pushing him back on to an armchair, so he can lean in and nose the neat line of his collar. Arthur allows him. He opens up to him, in fact, lips parting, his thighs easing apart to accommodate Alfred as he steps between them. Bending forward, he can feel Arthur breathing against his cheek, long, slow, damp. Then he swallows the air from his mouth.</p><p>It has been too long, since Alfred first came into the room, since he last saw Arthur—twenty-something scant minutes left, blink-blink-blink—and he pulls at the fraying threads of Arthur’s t-shirt, spinning them between his fingers. Enough turns and the fibres come away from the hem, spidery little white lines littering the seat’s surface. But Alfred is sick of tying knots. He fumbles Arthur’s shirt up to his chest, the loose fabric gathering under his arms. His skin is pale, unmarked, lovely in its perfect smoothness. </p><p>Alfred had never noticed how pronounced his ribs were until now, the sharp shadow of them more obvious with how he’s sat on the couch. Alfred’s fingers bump over them, the regular rise and fall.</p><p>“You’re not eating right,” he says, low in their mutual silence. Arthur doesn’t reply. Alfred adds—pointlessly, blankly, “You need to eat more.”</p><p>It’s so easy to summon this concern, but that’s because it’s sincere. Alfred really is worried.</p><p>Arthur is half-naked though, and panting, and making noises from the back of his throat that aren’t particularly nice but not awful, either, and Alfred drops his mouth to Arthur’s chest. The flesh darkens under his teeth. He never lingers long enough in one place to leave a lasting mark, but Arthur’s skin colours so readily. </p><p>(Concern is hard to prioritise when your erection is pressing and aching, an insistent reminder—but his heart is no less painful, and nothing wants to make sense anymore, nothing but Arthur. Arthur.)</p><p>Alfred drops to a kneel on the floor, still in the cradle of Arthur’s thighs. He is wearing loose pyjama shorts. The elasticated waistband has left little creases in Arthur’s skin, sleep-wrinkles. Two seconds of fumbling and Alfred has them out of the way. He squeezes Arthur through his boxers, thrilling at how he shivers at his touch.</p><p>“Do you like that?” Alfred asks, and lets his voice catch. “Do you?”</p><p>He waits and watches until Arthur answers with a slow lift of his chin, a half-nod. He’s lying, Alfred knows, but pretending not to know is better.</p><p>“Good,” he says. His fingernails dig into the red creases printed in the skin of Arthur’s waist. “I’m <i>glad</i>.”</p><p>When Alfred asks him to, Arthur obediently removes his own boxers. He folds himself back on to the seat of the armchair, raising his hips and tugging them past his feet. If Arthur is self-conscious then it doesn’t show on his face, but still his movements are awkward, jerky—endearing, not so far removed from his initial timid manner when first Alfred made friends with him. Back then, Arthur would sit ramrod straight at Alfred’s desk. He did not gesticulate when he spoke, and his hands would cycle through an endless nervous pattern during their sessions: up into Arthur’s hair, twisting in his lap and then his mouth, worrying at his torn cuticles. </p><p>Alfred doesn’t know what to do now, with Arthur naked, half-hard before him. Alfred reaches for his legs, coaxing him close until he can lift Arthur’s knees to rest on his shoulders. Then, he takes Arthur’s hand—just because—because he can—and moves it to his own mouth.</p><p>“Suck,” says Alfred, and Arthur again obeys. It’s sickening, almost, and the sounds are obscene, a wet suckling sound, and Alfred has never been harder in all his life, <i>fuck</i>. </p><p>He watches Arthur for a while before stopping him, his hand cupping the curve of his knee with intent. The skin over his scapula is firm, certain under the softer flesh of Alfred’s palm; he can feel scars, the evidence of a little boy who liked to play soccer and trip, to climb trees and fall off them.</p><p>Arthur’s slick fingers hover near his mouth still, awaiting direction. Alfred sits back on his haunches, and after a moment’s observation he grabs Arthur’s forearm. Guides his hand slowly, ever so slowly, between his own thighs. </p><p>“Here,” Alfred says, and taking Arthur’s hand in his own, he presses his saliva-slick fingers to Arthur’s entrance.</p><p>Arthur was blushing before, but there’s so little blood in his face now that he could almost be transparent. Sheer white shock.</p><p>“I don’t…” First thing he’s said in so long, and Alfred wishes it didn’t sound quite so heartbroken—so heart-breaking. </p><p>“Please,” Alfred says. His fingers press alongside Arthur’s own, drawing gentle teasing circles. “For me, Arthur.”</p><p>And Arthur does, with Alfred’s hand as a guide, pushing up into himself. His own fingers, first, just two. Not long after, Alfred grinds one of his own into Arthur too. Arthur’s abdomen flexes, tensing at the intrusion but accepting it nonetheless as Alfred probes and twists within him. He’s tight, and so warm it’s unbelievable, the ring of muscle squeezing around their fingers.</p><p>Arthur’s eyes are wet at the corners. It’s not unusual for it to hurt; this has to be his first time. It must be so overwhelming. It’s kinder not to see it, for him and Arthur both, and so Alfred pretends that he doesn’t.</p><p>Alfred jerks him off, too briskly. It makes Arthur’s head snap back, and this way he can’t see his expression. It’s easier like that; Alfred can focus his whole intent on purely pleasure, on Arthur’s physical reactions which provide a far more palatable response. When he comes, the suddenness of it seems to surprise them both—Arthur clenching around his fingers, gasping, a spasm that has him gripping the arms of the chair. Alfred simply holds, and waits. By the time it’s over it feels like the walls are falling around them.</p><p><i>Too soon</i>, Alfred thinks, and it’s almost bitter, <i>too soon too fast</i> and it’s just—that, like something precious shattered across the floor. A million pointless pieces. In all fairness, Arthur is young, and probably inexperienced—but that just seems to raise more questions in Alfred’s prickling mind. He wants to ask, <i>are you</i>, because he wants to be Arthur’s first and last as much as he ever wanted to have nothing to do with this.</p><p>“Good boy,” Alfred says, instead, and retracts his fingers with Arthur’s. His eyes are closed, his head still set back against the seat. “That wasn’t—”</p><p>—and he’s meaning to say, <i>that wasn’t too bad, was it,</i> because it truly wasn’t, and Alfred can see even now the aftershocks trembling in the muscles of Arthur’s calves, thighs, stomach. He’s interrupted by a knocking, though. A sharp startling sound in the silence. Alfred suddenly feels everything with new intensity: his cock, hard pressed into Arthur’s leg, and the high colour of Arthur’s face, and the semen streaked across his bare abdomen and Alfred’s fingers. </p><p>“Shit,” he hisses. He’s never moved so fast in all his life, passing Arthur his shorts as he yanks his tee back down, swiping the damp hair from his brow. Alfred kisses the spot where his fingers brush, tasting salt at Arthur's temple, trying to be tender in spite of his panic. “There.”</p><p>He wonders, <i>who the hell is that</i>, but even then he knows, remembering Arthur’s mumble through the door when he had knocked. Of course, who else would it be but Francis.</p><p>Arthur, as if hearing his thoughts, whispers, “Francis,” and sounds so naked as he does. Somehow, it’s worse—it’s <i>more</i>—than having Arthur sprawled before him, red and white and new. Alfred hates it so much that it swells his throat shut.</p><p>He swallows hard. </p><p>“Open the door,” Alfred says, trying to empty his mind as he throws papers into his briefcase. His come-wet fingers tack to them and dab backward numbers on to his palms. He nods his head at Arthur. “Go on.”</p><p>Wobbling only slightly, Arthur makes his way to the door. He takes a deep steadying breath, letting his hand rest on the handle before he opens it. There, Francis, wearing his Cheshire cat smile. From where he’s sitting, Alfred can’t hear much, though he sees Arthur’s throat bob. Francis says something too quick for him to catch. </p><p>Briefcase packed, Alfred stands and holds it—strategically.</p><p>“Francis!” he says, a little loud, offering a smile that shows too much gum. “I was just helping Arthur catch up on some of the work he’s missed.”</p><p>Francis nods vaguely, eyes flicking between him. It lingers on Arthur’s face. </p><p>“Are you… okay?” he asks, barely loud enough for Alfred to hear. Arthur’s jaw works, tension hard in his shoulders, but he nods.</p><p>“Fine.” Arthur holds up a hand, dismissing Francis’ mothering with a brisk wave. “Bit feverish, that’s all.”</p><p>It feels like he’s intruding on something. For one odd moment, Alfred feels as out of place as he ever has, looking at these two boys interact so calmly, so easily. He comes back to himself when two pairs of eyes land on him. </p><p>Alfred is a decent actor, and he summons up his latent charm. “Jeez, Francis, you’re a pretty great roommate. Don’t think I ever had one that didn’t just barge into the room without knocking.”</p><p>It prompts another half-shrug, a half-smile. “Ah, do you think? No, I would not knock usually, but I lent Arthur my key in case he needed to leave the room. He hasn’t found his yet.” Francis’ smile widens, but it does not reach his eyes. “As you say, I would <i>barge</i> in otherwise.”</p><p>It feels like a pointed remark, but Alfred has been so paranoid these days that almost everything seems pointed. He makes himself laugh, a deep warm chuckle.</p><p>“I shoulda guessed. But lending your key, well, that’s still pretty great roomie behaviour,” he says, as casually as he can. Alfred turns his attention to Arthur. “You should request another key. Shouldn’t be a problem.”</p><p>Arthur freezes at the sudden focus, but after an agonising silent second, he recovers. “Oh. Yes, I should. That’s a good idea.”</p><p>There’s that flickering look on Francis’ face again. Curiosity, confusion. Whatever it is, it makes Alfred’s stomach drop down into his feet. He needs to leave. The longer he’s there, the more it seems like Arthur will start spilling, slipping, splitting open. Alfred doesn’t blame him, not at all, especially since he instigated this session—but it feels pertinent that he remove himself.</p><p>“Oh, damn,” Alfred says, brow crinkling as he looks at his watch. It’s surprisingly hard to make a deliberate action look spontaneous, but he doubts that Francis is analysing his acting skills right now. “I’ve got to get going, can’t believe extra-curriculars are already over! Time flies, huh.”</p><p>He sidles past them, pausing briefly in the doorway. He holds Francis’ gaze, and then Arthur’s, trying to transmit as much easy, unaffected warmth as he can. </p><p>“Hope to see you next week, Arthur!”</p><p>Arthur looks at his feet, and Alfred feels Francis watching his back until the door swings shut behind him.<br/>
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</div><br/>Panic over, Alfred slips into the nearest bathroom once he’s back in the main building. It’s blessedly empty this late in the day, and he locks himself in a stall. It only takes a minute, because his mind is all pink and heavy and <i>yes</i>, the memory of Arthur still so fresh, and it tangles with the awful dirty thrilling fear of Francis at the door. Alfred is silent as he comes but he feels it in every single muscle in his body, a delicious rippling wave that steals the breath from him.<p>(Alfred thinks, <i>Arthur came in this same hand</i>, and scrubs them in the sink so hard that the soap stings his raw knuckles.)</p><p>He splashes his face with cold water and gasps at the shock of it. Always so much worse in the winter months, though spring will be on them soon. In the aftermath of his orgasm, he feels so tired. Tired, and old, and scared. But exhilarated, too. Yes, that’s what it is: Arthur exhilarates him like no one else ever has. It’s a realisation that frightens him as much as it makes him happy. Alfred knows it’s too much, too potent, but isn’t that what makes it worthwhile? This pleasure, such a rare and sacrosanct thing. What man would be strong enough to let that go? It’s only natural, what Alfred is doing.</p><p>The bell of the school clock chimes the hour, loud enough that Alfred jumps, and then laughs, breathless, half-hysterical, at his own nerves. He does need to get home soon. It would be strange seeing him around his office at this time. Not <i>that</i> strange, true, but worth remarking on if he ran into another teacher, and Alfred doesn’t have the energy for small talk.</p><p>Picking up his briefcase, he can’t help but think of Francis. His eerie, searching stare. How, in the lesson beforehand, he had asked more questions than he ever normally did. Alfred used to be fond of students like that. The curious ones. Not so much anymore.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out (especially in comparison to my quick schedule before). This is usually a busy time for me but especially so this year, and twice I lost my edited draft--completely through my own fault, but still it made starting again a painful process. Hopefully the next won't be so long in coming!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The weekend passes as slow and sure as the week before. Alfred lets it slide over him, hours slipping away like so much sand between his fingers. Matthew phones him on Saturday night. Their conversation is toothless, swerving between weather and work, work and weather. He sounds so worried, and Alfred doesn’t ask why even as some vague fear pulls at him (<i>ask</i>, it whispers, <i>say something</i>, but its voice is easily drowned beneath the blood roaring in his ears, so loud he can taste it bright and metallic in his mouth).</p><p>Lately, he dreams more than ever. Alfred had thought that finding satisfaction in the real world would have made them less frequent, less intense, but he is so wrong it’s almost laughable. He wakes at least three times a night, each night, and even when he can’t recall the dream in detail, hazy fragments linger just enough. Skin white as paper. A discarded tie. The sounds of him—that startled gasp, a keening cry. Sometimes, all Alfred is left with is the sense of blood-heat. And every time Alfred wakes sticky, clammy, his brain so strange and swollen it could leak out of his ears.</p><p>He tries to sleep less, whittling it down to a scant four hours. Maybe, maybe if he can concentrate his tiredness into such a short period, he will be too tired to dream at all. At this stage even four hours of unbroken sleep would be a blessing, a deep long drink of a sleep. It can’t be much more than Arthur is getting anyway. Hell, Arthur probably doesn’t get any sleep at all. The idea of him twisting and turning in bed, his restless kick to disentangle the sheets from his legs, fills Alfred with as much excitement as it does dismay.</p><p>“A problem shared is a problem halved,” Matt had said over the phone, the cliché rolling easily off his tongue as if he’d prepared it beforehand. He must have been getting desperate; their dad would always resort to aphorisms when faced with any problem that couldn’t be solved with a burger and a slap on the back.</p><p>Even at the time, Alfred had not been able to remember what topic had brought them there. His head had throbbed at the futzing, fuzzy sound of the phone’s receiver. Alfred had cradled his skull in one hand, feeling under his thumb the vein pulsing in his temple.</p><p>“That’s,” he had begun to say, paused, and began again, “that’s great, Matt. I gotta go.”</p><p>Then he had hung up.<br/>
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</div><br/><p>The school week looms like some monstrous thing, but once he’s made it to Monday afternoon Alfred realises it isn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. Only evenings fill him with rising dread at the sleepless, dreamless night ahead. Alfred grasps instead for the conscious sunlit hours, each day spent pressing equations into his students’ heads until they can recite them as easy as the alphabet. It’s a relief that he can still tap this well of enthusiasm. The beauty of infinity, the tidy potential of complex numbers, his mind so full with theories, functions and formulae that there’s room for little else.</p><p>All the same, Friday sits in the back of his skull. The promise of it resurfaces every so often, never quite letting Alfred forget. Arthur colours his thoughts like thread run through a tapestry. In everything Alfred sees him, feels him—the bare brush of a student’s blazer at the skin of Alfred’s wrist when he leans over to help, even the harsh reek of the overbrewed tea in the teacher’s lounge. There’s no joy in this anticipation. Alfred’s hope is so intense, so desperate, that he is nearly sick with it.</p><p>The end of the week crawls ahead of him on its knees. Friday is a bright but bracing spring day, one he would have relished last year, especially after a long and bitter winter. Now it hardly registers his notice. Alfred drinks copious cups of coffee to cope, though the absurdity of it isn’t lost on him. Ingesting so much stimulant to steady his nerves. It works, though, and by the end of third period, he’s able to hold his cup and walk-and-talk without spilling any. He feels almost like himself, almost human, his chattering teeth gritted into a full-beam grin.</p><p>His fourth class filters out and the next filters in. Alfred watches his students arriving in twos and threes, the gap between one clutch of boys and the next never long enough for the door to shut completely. The room is filled with noise: the screech of chairs, textbooks slapped out on to tables and pencils rattling, the foil crackle of snacks hurriedly eaten.</p><p>Then, beneath it, Alfred hears a familiar voice. Francis’ voice, recognisable even among the clamour, his silky accent unmistakeable. He has to resist the unbearable urge to look too obviously. Instead Alfred lets his gaze slide across the room as though he’s simply surveying it.</p><p>A thatch of unruly blond hair catches his attention. Arthur trails behind Francis. He has one hand anchoring his bag, the other up against his chin, fingers held over his mouth as though to keep in some involuntary noise. He looks everywhere but at Alfred, his eyes swivelling around the desks.</p><p>By the time Alfred realises that he’s staring, the five-minute movement break is over.</p><p>“Quiet, guys,” he says, and then realises he’s been so distracted he can hardly remember what the topic of the lesson is. The room falls silent, and he feels the weight of sixteen pairs of eyes on his face. “Uh… who’s up for a quiz?”</p><p>The class cringes in near perfect unison.<br/>
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It’s just like it used to be, and the relief is intense enough that Alfred could cry. His students—Arthur among them, though he keeps his head low throughout the hour—notice nothing amiss. They talk, laugh, listen to Alfred as they always have. The sun hangs low in the sky, and it casts tall monsters from the legs of chairs, tables, as the lesson comes to an end. Arthur sits at the back of the room waiting for it to empty. Francis does not linger. As the last student slips out of view, Arthur shoulders his bag and approaches Alfred’s desk. With habitual smoothness, he reaches for the nearest chair and pulls it forward, sliding it beneath his knees as he sits. There’s some miserable finality in everything he does, a boy preparing for a punishment he can’t avoid.</p><p>“Feeling better?” Alfred asks.</p><p>He stands to shut the door, only half-listening to Arthur’s stuttered <i>yes</i>. Alfred can see how he’s holding his pen too tight, the tendons in his wrist standing out stark against his skin. Doesn’t Arthur see how he does not lock the door, despite the cool weight of the key in his right pocket? Yet Arthur cowers in his seat like a beaten dog, his shoulders hunched almost to his ears.</p><p>Alfred touches his back gently, smiles gently, even as some part of him is screaming <i>see? see? this is what I can be, what I am. what you liked. I haven’t changed, it’s you.</i> He feels the top notch of Arthur’s spine and lets his hand rise up and away, so near to the tender flesh at the nape of his neck. His throat’s as fine as a bird’s, quivering just barely beneath Alfred’s reach. </p><p>
  <i>I can let you go. I can touch you innocently, casually. It can be like this, too, sometimes.</i>
</p><p>“Great!” Alfred says instead, and he means it. “Back to work, then.”</p><p>Arthur releases a held breath when he turns to the window, and such transparent relief sends a stab of uneasy anger through Alfred’s belly. He redoubles his attention to the world outside. A speck of dirt marks the glass. Alfred scratches at it but feels only the smooth surface of the glass beneath his thumbnail, at which he realises it must be on the external side. How annoying. The noise of his brisk tut is like a gunshot in the silent room; again Alfred tries not to notice Arthur’s wince, but still it unsettles his temper, some quiet fury curdling in his stomach. </p><p>He pulls a worksheet out from among many in his top drawer, one deliberately designed for Arthur. Questions he should be able to answer, and others that may push him with the work he’s missed. But a little challenge never hurt anyone, and that’s why Alfred’s here after all—to help should Arthur need it. He slides it to the opposite side of the desk and returns to the window. It’s cool against his forehead when he rests it there. The vein in his temple throbs.</p><p>Somewhere, somehow, in this yawning silence, Alfred is missing something.</p><p>(The zip of Arthur’s bag is bare, is why, and he’s thinking a thousand things like <i>I deserve that it was a gift it might have fallen off did he crush it.</i> It eats at his insides, a gnawing empty curiosity that grinds away all other thoughts.)</p><p>From the window, with how Arthur is bent over his work, Alfred can study him freely. The sweet mess of his hair, a little long. The rigid set of his shoulders beneath his blazer. Alfred wonders if the bitemark he left is still there, or whether Arthur thinks about like he does. Emerging from the shower, or brushing his teeth, or buttoning his shirt, and in the mirror seeing that mottled bruise on his clavicle. It would make him pause, probably. And maybe he would touch two fingers to it, feeling out the vague impression of Alfred’s teeth.</p><p>Alfred shutters his mind. Now is not the time to think about this. And his thoughts are disturbed anyway by the deliberate change in Arthur’s posture as he sits up, an abrupt lurch, pushing the worksheet away from him. For a moment Alfred thinks he’s sick of it—imagining Arthur’s rage, the anger that’s fizzled out of him suddenly roaring to life, how satisfying it would be to see—but no. It’s just that he’s finished the questions Alfred picked out for him.</p><p>Alfred swallows back his murmur of surprise. He pulls the sheet closer with his fingertips, hardly looking at it.</p><p>“Wow, good work today,” Alfred says, conversational. He taps a rhythm like his heart on to the desk as he spares Arthur’s work another cursory glance. Any satisfaction at his improvement has long grown thin. Still he adds, “You’re really getting better.”</p><p>Arthur doesn’t answer. When Alfred sinks back into his own chair, he sees the tightness forming around his eyes. It’s so tempting to lean over and touch the corner of them, just with the pad of his thumb. As if to ease that unhappy tension away. As if he could.</p><p>His hands don’t move, twisted together in an awkward knot on his desk. Alfred hears the breath of a sigh. Arthur closes his eyes, and his expression shuts off too, going blank, as though he has turned out some light within himself. Words form and die on Alfred’s tongue. What’s wrong. I’m sorry. You can go, now. Please go.</p><p>But they are so far beyond conversation at this point. And it’s such a shame, an unbearable shame, because that was always one of the things that Alfred really was good at. He used to enjoy it, too. Talking, and being talked to, and—perhaps <i>pretending</i>, especially after a long working day—but still, he had been a good listener. He had always liked to listen, even if only to reply in kind.</p><p>This isn’t one of those things you can talk through, though, is it.</p><p>Alfred can’t help but find it unfair. A selfish misery surges in him, filling his stomach with acid. It never <i>was</i> fair. Arthur—yes, a child—would never understand. It’s different for Alfred, because it’s—</p><p>—because it was Arthur who caught his attention in the first place. It was Arthur who dragged him so far into this dark corner. Perhaps it was only ever meant to be Arthur, a startled, startling creature, so out of place in Alfred’s routine, something exciting and new in the bland familiarity of his classroom. So different once you peeled away that mask of indifferent cynicism. </p><p>Alfred had always been a sucker for the latest thing. Arthur might have been just a novelty at first, with his fine-featured face, that English accent, his eyes, their quiet clever brightness. But it became so much more than that as Alfred had grown to know him. Arthur, talking in an afternoon gone golden, his cursive that sloped left once and right the other, and <i>football-soccer</i>, so many things untouchable, unknowable.</p><p>(Deep in his gut, in his soul, Alfred’s nerves knot in an inextricable mass of hot wire. It would have been easier if that’s all that it had been, wanting to fuck Arthur over a table in the staffroom. Lust would have been a simple thing to swallow back. But there has always been more to what Alfred has felt. Thinking it glues his tongue to his palate; it burns his eyes with unshed tears. But it’s too late for sentimentality. It’s too late to go back.)</p><p>He’s been silent too long. Arthur finishes packing up his things, bending over so that Alfred can see the whorl of hair at the crown of his head. He leaves mutely, throwing his bag over his shoulder and never looking back, never seeing Alfred. Though he does hesitate at the door, outstretched hand trembling above the handle as if afraid to try it.</p><p><i>I didn’t lock it. Don’t act like you didn’t see that I didn’t lock it,</i> Alfred thinks but does not say.</p><p>Arthur’s fingers close around the handle. Of course, the door swings open at his touch. Arthur pauses in that moment—relieved perhaps, tension loosening from his shoulders. Alfred releases his own held breath. Then, Arthur disappears into the corridor, and not once does he turn back to see Alfred’s face. Arthur doesn’t even try to see him. </p><p>Maybe it’s better that way: as soon as his footsteps fade, the raw bile of his anger burns Alfred’s throat, twists up his face. Alfred can’t even imagine what he must look like.<br/>
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</div><br/>“You know, it’s the usual. Slow progress with some of the students,” Alfred tells the phone between mouthfuls. Spaghetti, and it tastes pretty good because he made it, but not great because Matthew didn’t. “S’boring, especially what they’ve got me teaching right now.”<p>“Mhm, yeah,” Matthew says, and then, “are you eating? While on the phone?”</p><p>Alfred jabs his fork into the centre of his plate, twisting, twisting, until he’s gathered a tangled bolus of spaghetti that’s too large to eat. He lets it slide off the tines of his fork.</p><p>“You’re the one that called at dinner time. So it’s your fault, not mine.”</p><p>A beat passes. Alfred expects Matthew to tut, or sigh, or <i>something</i>, but there is no noise whatsoever from the other end of the line. It’s only after several long seconds that Alfred realises it isn’t a deliberate judgemental silence; Matthew’s not speaking because he cannot think of what to say.</p><p>Until, finally, he murmurs: “Al, it’s nine thirty. You never eat this late.”</p><p>Alfred swivels his wrist upwards, though his new watch is so strange and unfamiliar that he takes it off as soon as he gets back home. Inexplicable panic grips him. Alfred’s focus turns to the clock above the door—a kitschy cuckoo clock that never crowed, a housewarming gift that Matt sent him the first week he moved in—but it broke a month ago, forever telling the time at twelve minutes past three. </p><p>These days when he gets home, Alfred seems to drop into some mindless limbo. He hardly remembers doing chores—cleaning, cooking, eating—but he must do them, pure repetition taking him through familiar motions. Dishes don’t crowd the sink; food doesn’t rot in the fridge. His clothes are washed and creaseless. But Alfred doesn’t really remember doing these things. It’s almost as if the ghost of his mother is doing them in the night.</p><p>At least Alfred is aware of how detached he is. But that he is so unaware in the first place still fills his stomach with icy dread.</p><p>He’s taken too long to speak. Alfred gulps, and then forces out a deliberate sound of surprise. “Jeez, is it?” And he gives a weary sigh, as though exhausted, scrambled, a wouldja-look-at-that sort of sigh. “I’ve been marking work non-stop since I got in. Must’ve lost track of time.”</p><p>Again Matthew is slow to reply. With every passing second, Alfred can feel his pulse thudding in his throat, his wrists, the depths of his belly.</p><p>Matt sighs. “You could have just, I dunno, <i>told</i> me you were having dinner.” There’s another deliberate pause, and Alfred can only assume his brother is making a face against the receiver. “I’ll talk to you later, I guess.”</p><p>The dial tone drones just as Alfred manages to say his goodbye. He stares down at his plate, the phone hanging slack in his hand. The screen blinks 21:37 in square white digits.</p><p>Every conversation of theirs ends this way, now: stilted, neither really following, some immeasurable distance stretching between them. It should scare him. It does scare him. But Alfred has lost the will and the nerve to try to reach Matthew. To let Matthew reach him.<br/>
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</div><br/>He gets no phone calls, from anyone, for the rest of the week, and that’s <i>fine</i>. He doesn’t need Matt to call him. Alfred is busy enough, anyway, because his students are getting edgier the further they get into the semester. It’s a familiar pattern, the inevitable approach of exams looming—still so far off, but not so abstract as they had seemed before the holidays—and so Alfred finds himself devoting more time than ever to his work. Now he’s free to actually enjoy his free time when it comes (rare though it may be), instead of wasting it making watery small-talk with his brother.<p>It’s Thursday night. There’s nothing on TV, and Alfred’s appetite is shot—he can’t remember the last time food tasted like much of anything. He’s scared to sleep. Alfred can hear short snatches of music from cars that flash by, their headlights cutting white shapes into the opposite wall. Over and over his mind stirs, restless, a thrashing animal in its net. Alfred stands and paces, and eventually his feet carry him to his car.</p><p>The engine is slow to start. It grumbles to life with Alfred’s fourth attempt, angry at being disturbed this late at night. Alfred has no idea what he’s doing, but he knows exactly where he’s going.<br/>
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The drive feels nearer to an hour than the twenty minutes it should take. Maybe because Alfred lets himself drive in circles, his insides lurching whenever the drugstore’s illuminated sign comes into view. Really he could just be buying aspirin. Overpriced candy. A magazine on trout fishing. His throat is so dry that he can barely breathe. Something has taken him over: it’s what led him to the car, this far off campus, his sweating hands slipping on the steering wheel. Alfred knows, now, exactly why he’s here. The part of him still sane is pleading, begging a refusal, that this is too far, but Alfred pulls in once he comes back round to the little white store on the corner.</p><p>He’s been thinking too much, alone with his thoughts long enough that they’ve twisted themselves into something he can’t recognise. It’s an irresistible sickness, the terrible pleasure he gets in planning—imagining—Arthur’s face burning with hot surprise, the door clicking shut—the lock—the smell of sweat and the classroom, or Arthur’s room, black tea and French cologne. Can you still call it an indulgence if you give into it so regularly? Alfred feels a bitter grin warp his expression. It’s more like an addiction.</p><p>The drugstore is far enough away that he’s pretty sure no one he knows will be there. And anyway, the school has its own facilities should staff and students need them. Still Alfred can’t help his uneasy look, scanning each aisle before he walks down it. With his head tucked low and his furtive, jerky loping from shelf to shelf, he must look like an overgrown shoplifter.</p><p>Alfred is in and out within five minutes. He does not dare give himself long—afraid to think too much, afraid to attract attention, afraid to lose his nerve. It’s not relief that floods him on his return to the car. It’s closer to grim acceptance, and beneath that some strange exhilaration. Beside him in the passenger seat, the plastic bag looks benign, meaningless. Still Alfred can determine the compact edge of the box within, its lurid colour practically glowing through the bag’s white film. </p><p>He wraps it up in his coat for the short walk from the car to his apartment. Inside the door, he drops it—unwieldy, anonymous in the absurd bulk of his bomber jacket—on to the seat of his couch. Alfred goes to bed, and he does not sleep. The image of it there in his living room burns in his brain. Rising from some dusty memory of a high school English class, Alfred thinks of the tell-tale heart, and his face twists into a grimace, half-crying, half-laughing, even as the shame is so crippling his body curls in on itself.<br/>
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</div><br/>It feels so obvious in his pocket that Alfred is almost scared someone will say something. But of course, it isn’t obvious at all. At least Alfred is sane enough to recognise his own paranoia. The classroom key—now threaded alongside the keys to his apartment, his car—gives its occasional <i>clink</i> with every other step. It all serves to remind him; to not let him forget.<p>(Whenever he folds his right hand into his pocket, he feels the shock of foil against his fingers and jolts like he doesn’t expect it to be there. As if he didn’t put them there this morning.)</p><p>There’s hand lotion in his top desk drawer. He checks that it’s still there that morning, and sure enough he finds the tube shoved in behind a broken stapler and a column of post-it notes he uses as a coaster, the topmost sheets warped and ringed from his coffee cup. </p><p>It’s a little embarrassing, sure, but his hands get so dry, especially in winter.</p><p>(It’s like a jigsaw, the most simple equation, three basic elements coming together so easily. The dreams always felt impossible, unreal, a distant and dreaded thing. It’s never as difficult as you fear, though—Alfred knows that now. It could be just like he’s imagined. Up against the desk, its legs screeching against the wooden floor with the vicious way he bucks into Arthur’s body; or against the wall, his posters on calculus splitting under his own frantic scrambling fingers, caught beneath Arthur’s naked shoulders, his head thrown back in wordless pleasure.)</p><p>He hardly notices the lessons passing. The clock above the classroom door ticks the minutes away. When finally Arthur arrives, his expression is flat, blank, his voice so quiet in his conversation with Francis that Alfred cannot hear him above the clamour of the others.</p><p>(The final piece of the puzzle.)<br/>
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Though when it’s him and Arthur alone, Alfred’s nerves are so frayed he can’t stay still. He laps his desk twice even as Arthur approaches the front of the room. His brain presses against the inside of his skull, heavy and strange. Alfred lowers his hands to the desk, willing his stomach to settle. Arthur holds his own together on his lap, his bony fingers tightened into fists. Waiting, waiting patiently—sweat beading on Arthur’s forehead, his jaw locked tight enough to hurt—for Alfred to say something.</p><p>The question rises up from some dark hole in his chest.</p><p>“Remember,” says Alfred, so close to Arthur’s ear that he can sense the warmth of his cheek against his own, “the Thanksgiving present I gave you? What happened to it?”</p><p>He feels the rush of new heat to Arthur’s face more than he sees it, but the reassurance comes quick, Arthur stumbling over a breath to speak.</p><p>“Oh, it fell off, I—I think,” he says, and the veins in the back of his hands stand out a striking blue, cable-like beneath thin flesh. “I don’t know, I lost it… I’m sorry.”</p><p>Alfred forces out a sigh. “Oh, well.”</p><p>He pushes himself upright, and Arthur’s exhale is almost tangible in its relief. The guilt seizes him so tightly that Alfred freezes halfway into his stand, but he can’t stop when he’s this close. He doesn’t want to stop. Not when he’s waited—seven months, or eight—too many, and this was his <i>dream</i>, wasn’t it, and he’s gone through hell to get this far. So. No. No stopping.</p><p>Alfred walks over to the door, each step measured, as slow as his body will allow. His fingers find the key—brushes the foil, the crinkle stirring his blood—and he turns it in the lock. Behind him he hears Arthur’s breathing start and stop and hitch into something else.</p><p>It’s too late to stop. Alfred has never been one to give up halfway, not when he’s committed.<br/>
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<br/>
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Alfred rubs the key between his fingers. The metal is cold, smooth, soothing against his burning touch. He drops the lot of them on his desk, and Arthur jumps at the sharp jangling noise they make. Arthur, three feet and a thousand miles away, looking only at the surface of the desk in front of him. He’s almost hyperventilating; short staccato whimpers escape with each exhale.</p><p>“Stand up,” says Alfred hoarsely, and now he wonders just how much he can make Arthur do with the power of his voice alone. “Go on, Arthur.”</p><p>There’s the awful familiar scrape of the chair against the wooden floor as Arthur lurches upright. The abruptness of it makes the papers on his desk rustle, unsettled.</p><p>“Take off your tie,” Alfred says. </p><p>An odd shiver creeps up his spine as Arthur loosens the knot, his trembling hands struggling briefly before the ends slip free. It slithers through his fingers as if alive. The sound of it hitting the floor is swallowed up by the silence.</p><p>“Your blazer,” offers Alfred. Then, “Your shirt.”</p><p>They drop in easy succession. Arthur’s gaze never leaves the surface of the table. Alfred feels like a coiled spring, so tightly wound that to move now would be impossible. His mouth is dry. Thoughts rush through his mind—meaningless, rapid-fire, never lasting long enough to take shape—and Alfred lets them pass like water through a sieve. He can hardly think, but then he doesn’t need to.</p><p>"Look at me,” Alfred says, with no less intent than his previous commands. The sound of his voice is foreign even to himself—low, dark, lonely. “<i>Look</i>.”</p><p>There’s a moment, brief but unmistakable, in which Alfred thinks that Arthur won’t. In which Arthur will stare at nothing forever, untouchable in his absent surrender. But then his gaze lifts from the desk, and he meets Alfred’s stare, lashes cast low over his eyes. In this light, with the cold blank strangeness of his expression, they look black rather than green. </p><p>If that flicker of something wasn’t there, that proof of reluctance, or rebellion, Alfred wouldn’t enjoy this anywhere near as much. The stubbornness—the determination in the champagne shadows of his eyes—is so quintessential Arthur that Alfred would miss it if it were gone. A spirit that can’t be broken even with Alfred’s rough handling.</p><p><i>You’re fucking crazy</i>, his mind says. But then, the darker thoughts in Alfred’s head are loud, loud enough that he can drown it out with little effort.</p><p>And anyway, he’s sick of just talking; his skin prickles with the urge for physical contact. What can’t be conveyed by voice can be done by touch, and what can is better otherwise. He’s never been the most patient person in the first place, and Arthur’s uneasy hands are slow, much slower than Alfred’s own would be.</p><p>He walks into Arthur’s space, feeling the heat of him this close. He lifts his hand to the centre of Arthur’s chest, splaying his hands there, his sternum shifting beneath his palm with each deep breath. It’s Alfred’s way, the only way he can say he’s sorry, the horror of what he can’t speak aloud hovering between them in the still silence. It’s more than merely touching for the sake of it. </p><p>At this point, Alfred knows better than to expect Arthur to understand this gutless useless gesture, so he lets his hand drop lower. Arthur’s skin is noticeably paler beneath his shirt, the flat of his abdomen white as a sheet. It’s charming, something you wouldn’t otherwise notice but for the proximity, just a shade’s difference between his throat, his forearms. At his clavicle—where it wouldn’t show above the collar of his shirt—Alfred’s love bite has faded to a faint blotch. The sight of it sends new fire through his blood.</p><p>He can’t help his quiet murmur of appreciation. This reward laid out before him, earned not without effort, without pain, but worth it despite all his agonising. Yes, even thinking back on it now, even with his desperate regret when alone… Alfred would do it all again for the perfect purity of this moment. </p><p>His fingers dip lower, skirting the edge of the belt at Arthur’s waist. Arthur’s shudder passes through him like a wave but he does not pull away. Cheap fake leather, the kind you could put your nail through and expect it to come back dirty. It seems foreign on Arthur’s otherwise immaculate self—whether dressed so neatly in his uniform or with this new naked vulnerability.</p><p>The buckle clicks open. The leather slips through Alfred’s palm, almost liquidlike, warm still from Arthur’s body. It’s like touching him by proxy. He lets it pass through his grip and hit the floor, a swish and a clatter, a whip twisting between them. The sudden noise of it makes Arthur flinch again.</p><p>The hollow of flesh and bone beneath the fabric of his pants is apparent now without the belt. Alfred clutches at Arthur’s hip. His thumbs fit neatly in the crook of them, holding Arthur in place—a pinned insect—as he strokes circles into the skin above his waistband. He's so warm it's as if he’s been lying in the sun. When he looks closely, Alfred can see old fingerprint-pattern bruises, hardly more visible than the faint one at his collarbone.</p><p>A greedy wild thing stirs in Alfred’s belly at the seething urge to add to them, and his grip tightens. </p><p>With his other hand Alfred reaches into his pocket, his fingers closing around cool foil. The noise of it catches Arthur’s attention, his eyes filling with terrible, terrified light, the sound of it recognisable even to a fourteen year old. It sits in the centre of Alfred’s palm, crude and abstract-looking. A quiet stillness descends.</p><p>Arthur’s eyes grow wide as he deciphers the benign little square. He opens his mouth to speak, the words spilling out of him like he can’t think fast enough to catch himself.</p><p>“No, sir, please,” he chokes, scrabbling for the scant remnants of Alfred’s humanity, his sanity. “Don’t, I’m sorry, I’ll—<i>please</i>—”</p><p>He speaks so quietly, as though afraid to break the strange surface-tension-peace of the air between them, but there’s a hysterical edge to his voice. Pure panic. Alfred cuts him off before he can work himself into a state, his other hand cupping Arthur’s chin. He lets the pad of his thumb run over Arthur’s bottom lip, warm and chapped.</p><p>“Shh,” says Alfred, “it’s okay, it’s okay. I promise.”</p><p>Alfred wishes someone would take him aside and say those words; he imagines his mother’s gentle touch, the way she would comb his hair through with her thick fingers when he was small enough to allow it. The house smelling of apple pie and her perfume. Even now the mere memory of it calms Alfred down.</p><p>Arthur is perfectly still, perfectly silent.</p><p>(But he watches with that acid gaze, his stare catching Alfred in its talons—a flat, unfamiliar look that tears at him, stripping him down to his naked soul, as raw and repellent as the rest of him.)</p><p>Even as he says them the words taste like a sour cliché, but still they must be worth saying: “I’ll be gentle,” he offers, speaking so softly it could be a prayer, a confession, “I promise.”</p><p>Alfred can’t promise anything else.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for all your comments, bookmarks, kudos. I've been honestly (pleasantly!) surprised at the audience for this fic when I was expecting hardly any response at all. Your feedback is hugely appreciated!</p>
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